Mycoflora and vitamin content of sun-dried food condiments in Nigeria.

The fungi most frequently isolated (of 20-100% incidence) from fresh okra, pepper fruits and melon seeds are Botryodiplodia theobromae, Rhizopus stolonifer, Trichoderma harzianum, Mucor mucedo and Fusarium oxysporum. The major mycoflora of the fruits which had been sun-dried for twenty days are comprised of Aspergillus spp and Penicillium spp which initially had formed the minor components (of less than 20% incidence) of the colonising population. The effect of sun-drying on the fruits was a statistically significant (P = 0.05) decrease in the riboflavin content and a generally small and non-significant decrease in the concentrations of thiamine, niacin, biotin and ascorbic acid. The effect of mouldiness during sun-drying was to further decrease the concentration of the vitamins.