Question

Which of the following causes food poisoning?
A) Aspergillus
B) Rhizopus
C) Xanthomonas
D) All of the above

Answer 1

Hint:Consumption of food or water containing bacterial toxins, parasites etc. Causes food poisoning in people. Inclusion of trace amounts of heavy metal can also cause food poisoning. Contamination of food grains that leads to food poisoning can occur during growing, harvesting, processing, storing stages.

Complete answer:
Toxicology simply means the study of poisons, which is concerned with the qualitative and quantitative study of detection, concentration, chemical and physical properties, biological effects of exogenous toxins called toxins.

The kingdom fungi consist of heterotrophic organisms, which have diverse habitat and morphological characters. They are cosmopolitan in distribution and occur in water, air, soil, and on plants and animals. They prefer to grow in humid and warm places. Fungi are filamentous and their body consists of thread like long structures known as hyphae. Fungi have chitinous and polysaccharide cell walls.

Most of the fungi are heterotrophic in nature and can live as saprophytes, parasites, symbionts etc. Network of long is known as mycelium, based on the morphology of mycelium, mode of spore formation and fruiting bodies kingdom fungi is divided into classes such as ascomycetes, phycomycetes, deuteromycetes and basidiomycetes.

Members of phycomycetes have septate and coenocytic mycelium. They are found in aquatic habitats and on decaying plants. Example is Rhizopus (bread mould), which can poison food sources. Ascomycetes are known as sac fungi. Their mycelium is septate and branched. They are decomposers, saprophytic and parasitic in nature. One example is Aspergillus and it can cause food poisoning.

Xanthomonas is a bacterium and it can also cause food poisoning.

Thus,the correct answer is option (D) All of the above.

Note:Bad personal hygiene, improper cleaning of storage and production areas and unclean equipment can cause contamination of raw and cooked foods. Mishandling of raw and cooked foods allow microbes to grow. Since food-poisoning bacteria are often present on many foods, knowing the characteristics of such bacteria is essential for its effective control.