Mycotoxins are secondary metabolites of filamentous fungi. They pose a health risk to humans and animals due to their harmful biological properties and common occurrence in food and feed. Mycotoxins contamination of food and feedstuffs is among the top priorities for human and animal safety. 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 instrument s/technologies). Clean-up is essential for the analysis of mycotoxins at trace levels, and involves the use of solid phase extraction and multifunctional or immunoaffinity columns. The currently used techniques for mycotoxin determination, either chromatography or ELISA. Different chromatographic methods are commonly used for quantitative determination of mycotoxins, including gas-chromatography (GC) coupled with electron capture, flame ionization or mass spectrometry (MS) detectors 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 simultaneous screening, identification and quantitative determination of a large number of mycotoxins. In addition, commercial immunometric assays, such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent 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, fluorescence polarization immunoassays (FPIA), infrared spectroscopy (FT-NIR) and molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs). This review deals with the current analytical methodologies (traditional and emerging), available for the detection of main mycotoxins occurring in cereals and cereal-based products.
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