Nigeria is to collaborate with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and World Bank to stop contamination of food crops by aflatoxins. ITTA said in a press statement issued in Lagos on Sunday that the collaboration was necessary to stop the huge volume of agriculture commodities lost annually to contamination by aflatoxins

The statement said that the contamination had denied farmers of good income and sources of their livelihood. It said that a road map to tackle aflatoxins had been drawn by the Commercial Agriculture Development Program (CADP) that is being supported by the World Bank. IITA said that the road map was being implemented in Kano, Kaduna, Enugu, Cross River and Lagos states.

“It is a major step by the government towards ensuring food safety and food security,” it said

“The collaboration among Nigeria, IITA, and the World Bank will roll out and make available to farmers a bio-control product called aflasafe that would stop the aflatoxin menace. This is good news to farmers because they now have a solution to the problem.

If farmers apply aflasafe, they can sell their maize at premium prices and above all guarantee safety of home-grown food and health of consumers,”” the statement quoted Mr Ranajit Bandyopadhyay, IITA Pathologist, as saying. It said that findings of research trials conducted in Kaduna state between 2009 and 2010 revealed that farmers who treated their fields with aflasafe reduced the levels of contamination by 80 to 90 per cent.

According to the statement, aflatoxins and other fungal are contaminants that hurt farming and people’s health. It said that studies had shown that it could lead to liver cancer if not checked. IT cited the example of Kenya where consumption of flatoxin-contaminated maize resulted in several deaths of lives poultry and fish, among others. “In Nigeria maize farmers face rejection from the premium food market due to aflatoxin contamination,” it said.