Gaseous ozone to improve quality of corn as feedstuff

In the long term, fungi attacks will cause a decrease in the quality of corn during storage. In this case, Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus have become a serious concern related to food safety because of their ability to produce aflatoxins which are toxic to humans and animals. Nowadays, feed industries use fungicides to control fungal infections before the storage period due to their affordability, but the chemical residues are detrimental to our health. Therefore, an alternative method was needed to prevent and control fungi and aflatoxin formation in corn. One of the potential methods to apply is the gaseous ozonization. This research was conducted to investigate the potential of ozone in preventing fungal attacks and aflatoxin formation in corn, assuring that the corn quality can be maintained during the storage period. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of ozone on maintaining the quality of corn during storage, especially to reduce fungi colonies and aflatoxin formation. The experimental design used in this study was a completely randomized design with two treatment factors, namely temperature (20, 30, and 40°C) and exposure time (30 and 60 minutes). Corn quality parameters observed include moisture content, total fungal, moldy kernels, damaged kernels, and aflatoxin (AFB1, AFB2, AFG1, AFG2) contamination. The results showed that ozone treatment had an effect on reducing total fungal and aflatoxin contamination in corn, however, it had no effect on the moisture content, moldy kernels, and damaged kernels of corn. The optimum effect was obtained when the ozonization was conducted at a temperature of 20°C for 60 minutes exposure time, which results in the highest reduction in total fungal and total aflatoxin contamination of 36.77% and 92.45% respectively.