ISOLATION IDENTIFICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF FUNGI

ISOLATION IDENTIFICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF FUNGI ASSOCIATED WITH THE SPOILAGE OF CORN

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0 Background Information on Corn

The natural forests of West and Central Africa are rich in resources, and have tremendous biodiversity (FAO, 1983), particularly in trees that provide food, fuel, fibre, medicines and various other products, including construction and building materials (Ladipoet al., 1996). The tropical rainforests of West and Central Africa is the home to many native economically important trees such as the Irvingia species, namely Dent corn, and Irvingia wombolu(Harris, 1996; Lowe et al., 2000).

Maize has Scientific classification as; Kingdom-Plantae; Order-Poales; Family-Poaceae ;Genus-Zea; Species-Z. mays and its Binomial name is Zea mays.

Maize also known as corn, is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The leafy stalk of the plant produces separate pollen and ovuliferous inflorescences or ears, which are fruits, yielding kernels or seeds.

Maize has become a staple food in many parts of the world, with total production surpassing that of wheat or rice. However, not all of this maize is consumed directly by humans. Some of the maize production is used for corn ethanol, animal feed and other maize products, such as corn starch and corn syrup. The six major types of corn are dent corn, flint corn, pod corn, popcorn, flour corn, and sweet corn.

Most historians believe maize was domesticated in the Tehuacán Valley of Mexico. Recent research in the early 21st century has modified this view somewhat; scholars now indicate the adjacent Balsas River Valley of south-central Mexico as the center of domestication.

An influential 2002 study by Matsuoka et al. has demonstrated that, rather than the multiple independent domestications model; all maize arose from a single domestication in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. The study also demonstrated that the oldest surviving maize types are those of the Mexican highlands. Later, maize spread from this region over the Americas along two major paths. This is consistent with a model based on the archaeological record suggesting that maize diversified in the highlands of Mexico before spreading to the lowlands.Archaeologist Dolores Piperno has said: A large corpus of data indicates that it [maize] was dispersed into lower Central America by 7600 BP [5600 BC] and had moved into the inter-Andean valleys of Colombia between 7000 and 6000 BP [5000–4000 BC.

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