PMIL collaborator, Agnes Mwangwela, co-authored a paper, “Quality evaluation of sunflower and groundnut oil produced by two cooperatives under the one village one product programme in central Malawi,” published in the March 2015 issue of the African Journal of Agricultural Research.
The article about local cooperatives producing quality oil from groundnuts (peanuts) provides evidence that the discolored peanuts that are most likely to have aflatoxin contamination, also have a potential local use. Other authors on the paper include Austin Matola, Kingsley Masamba, and Vincent Mlotha from Bunda College, Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Agnes is a collaborator on PMIL’s Southern Africa Peanut Value Chain Intervention project.
PMIL is evaluating the potential for pressing such potentially contaminated groundnuts at local mills to offset the loss faced by farmers and processors from removing them from the good peanuts. Several questions are being addressed including what level of aflatoxin persists in the oil based on the quality of the filtration, and what can be done with the press cake to avoid the risk of use for human or livestock consumption.