9. Discussion
This study showed that the fungal load per sample might be
correlated with the type of medium on which the samples were
cultured. The two isolation media (DRBC and DG18) showed
to be suitable for culturing food borne fungi contaminating
meat samples. As shown in Table 2, the high counts were probably
mainly due to an outbreak in the counts of P. griseofulvum.
All canned samples of meat had no growth of
fungi observed visually by the naked eye. All samples were
apparently in good condition when sampled. The presence of
fungal units (spores, hyphae or budding cells) can be expected
as contamination from the environment during meat processing
and canning. If sterilization is not enough such fungi
may remain viable and cultivable when conditions become
favorable for the growth of fungi.
Table 6 shows that there was a high level of similarity
between fungi isolated from meat samples and their related
equivalents obtained from the GenBank. All fungal DNA
bands identified and displayed similarities to GenBank data
were of Penicillin spp. Three were P. chrysogenum, two were
P. citrinum, three were P. griseofulvum while P. oxalicum were
found in one isolate each. Contamination of meat by these
species has been previously reported in the literature
(Dorn-In et al., 2013).