Posted on March 3rd, 2021 in Program Updates
Groundnuts (peanuts) are widely used in Senegalese cuisine and are a critical part of the poverty reduction strategies targeted at rural households. However, every stage of their production, processing, and storage carries a risk of microbial and fungal contamination that can lead to foodborne illnesses. In a project funded by the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Safety (FSIL), an interdisciplinary team at Purdue University partnered with the Institut Sénégalais de Recherches Agricoles (ISRA) to quantify chemical and microbial contamination levels in groundnuts that smallholder farmers in Senegal eat, sell and store for seed.