DETECTION METHODS FOR MYCOTOXINS IN CEREAL GRAINS AND CEREAL PRODUCTS

ABSTRACT: Analytical methods for mycotoxins in cereals and cereal-based products require three major steps, including extraction, clean-up (to eliminate interferences from the extract and concentrate the analyte), and detection/determination of the toxin (by using suitable analytical instruments/technologies). Clean-up is essential for the analysis of myco-toxins at trace levels, and involves the use of solid phase extraction and multifunctional (e.g. MycoSep®) or immunoaffinity columns. Different chromatographic methods are com-monly used for quantitative determination of mycotoxins, including gas-chromatography (GC) coupled with electron capture, flame ionization or mass spectrometry (MS) detectors (mainly for type-A trichothecenes), and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with ultraviolet, diode array, fluorescence or MS detectors. The choice of method depends on the matrix and the mycotoxin to be analyzed. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is spreading rapidly as a promising technique for simul-taneous screening, identification and quantitative determination of a large number of myco-toxins. In addition, commercial immunometric assays, such as enzyme-linked immunosor-bent assays (ELISA), are frequently used for screening purposes as well. Recently, a variety of emerging methods have been proposed for the analysis of mycotoxins in cereals based on novel technologies, including immunochromatography (i.e. lateral flow devices), fluore-scence polarization immunoassays (FPIA), infrared spectroscopy (FT-NIR), molecularly im-printed polymers (MIPs) and optical biosensors