Barantan Says Aflatoxin Content Exceeds Threshold Is The Reason The European Union Rejects Indonesian Pala Fruit

Checking the quality of nutmeg from Indonesia before being exported by ANTARA/HO-SKP Ambon

AMBON - The Agricultural Quarantine Agency (Barantan) found that the aflatoxine content of nutmeg fruit from Indonesia exceeded the threshold. "This is one of the reasons for the rejection of the European Union (EU) against Indonesian nutmeg when it will be exported," said Analytics for the Quarantine of Plants, Main Experts of the Barantan Agricultural Quarantine Agency, Antarjo Dikin in a written statement received in Ambon, Antara, Sunday, April 2. Antarajo Dikin conveyed this when describing his material in the online alphatoksin contamination mitigation technical meeting. Aflatoxine is an organic compound resulting from secondary metabolism from the Ascarallus sp fungi, which has toxic or toxic properties for human or animal health. The threshold for total aflatoxine levels (alphatoxine B1, B2, G1 and G2) ≤ 20 μg per kilogram provided that the aflatoxine B1 ≤ 5 μg per kilogram does not contain preservatives, fragrances, and dyes. According to him, this happened because most of Indonesia's nutmeg from traditional plantations still did not pay attention to its quality. "Most likely contaminating with cyclists and product discrepancies are quite high," he said. The reason is, based on data from the Indonesia Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (INRASFF) and News Faction (BRAFAKS) of the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia (KBRI) in the EU, from 2016 to July 2022, Indonesia's nutmeg received a Notification of Non-Complicity (NNC) of 95 percent of EU countries. It was also stated that in the period 2019 to 2021, the total export of seed nutmeg for the EU was 6,864 thousand tons with a notification amount of 92,074 tons or 1.34 percent. It was recorded in the Barantan system, IQFast, the number of palm exports from Maluku in 2022 is 3,114 tons. Follow-up to the stability of aflatoxin contamination-free exports, said Antarjo, with fruit harvests not touching the ground, drying nutmeg with oven, as well as packaging with silica gels and catchable packaging, container cleanliness. Therefore, the coordination of several agencies, such as plantation offices, OKKPD, Barantan and exporters, development monitoring reports, and export clinics is needed. It was stated that the application of standards must start from upstream to downstream so that the produced nutmeg is free from aflatoxine contamination and in accordance with the requirements of the destination country. Each supply chain, starting from farmers, collectors, exporters, to distribution, according to him, has a high contribution to the success of Indonesian nutmeg exports. Meanwhile, Head of the Class I Agricultural Quarantine Station (SKP) Ambon Kostan said that his party was taking various strategic steps to improve the quality of the nutmeg as a form of efforts to make agricultural agribusiness a success in Maluku. He mentioned one of them by continuing to improve the skills of human resources (HR) from functional officials to provide technical guidance to farmers and accelerate export services. For this reason, his party also always establishes synergy with related agencies in Maluku. "We state that we are ready to fully support efforts to succeed and increase exports of agricultural commodities together with all related parties in Maluku," he said.