Effects of Various Spices on Common Food Contaminating Fungal Species

Effects of Various Spices on Common Food Contaminating Fungal Species

Food waste in America can reach upwards of 96 billion pounds of food lost each year. One factor that causes such waste is food spoilage by microorganisms including bacteria and fungi. A possible method to reduce such food waste is to use common spices in our food to help deter fungal growth. Two representative samples of fungi, Candida albicans (yeast) and Rhizopus stolonifer (mold) were used to study the antifungal effects. Cinnamon, clove, garlic, onion and oregano were tested to see if they could have an antifungal effect on the two fungal species. A common microbiological test called disk diffusion was used to quantitatively determine the effectiveness of each spice on the fungi. Any fungi that also showed increased resistance were also collected and further tested. It was found that all five spices had an inhibitory effect on C. albicans, while only cinnamon, clove and oregano had an inhibitory effect on R. stolonifer. Therefore, R. stolonifer was found to be a more resistant species of fungi compared to C. albicans. Also, resistant strains were found for only C. albicans in all the spices except for cinnamon. Since both fungi were effected in some way by the spices, it was determined that certain spices have an antifungal effect and may be a method to reduce food waste.

Galle, Glenn

Biology

Lake Superior State University

2012

Copyright Glenn Galle: All rights reserved. LSSU use only.

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S20230111014