Detoxification of unshelled hazelnut artificially contaminated with aflatoxins by gaseous ozone

Abstract

This study set out to investigate the usefulness of gaseous ozone application on the detoxification process of aflatoxins in hazelnuts by regarding the quality parameters of hazelnuts. The General Multilevel Factorial Design (GMFD) method was employed to test the effect of ozone concentration and application time on the aflatoxin degradation process. For this purpose, 3.33 and 10 mg/L gaseous ozone applied to unshelled nuts for 30, 60 and 120 min. AflatoxinB1 (AFB1) and AflatoxinG1 (AFG1) were more sensitive to ozonation than AflatoxinB2 (AFB2) and AflatoxinG2 (AFG2). The results indicated that AFB1 and total aflatoxins could be achieved below the tolerable limit when hazelnut samples were ozonated both at 10.0 mg/L for 60 min and 3.33 mg/L for 120 min. From a main effects point of view, the results confirm that both variables have main effects on the aflatoxin degradation as well as the parameter of time being more effective on all the aflatoxins. Furthermore, there were no significant change in the quality parameters of the hazelnut between treated and untreated samples. The results of this investigation show that ozone is applicable in hazelnut production to hurdle aflatoxin contaminations.