Challenges in the Analysis of Multiple Mycotoxins

The analytical problems associated with different groups or “families” of mycotoxins have been known for some time and for many years, certain groups of mycotoxins are known to co-occur in commodities and foods. Until fairly recently, commodities and foods were analysed for individual toxins or groups of related toxins and attempts of measuring multiple groups of toxins required significant investments in terms of time, effort, and expense. Analytical technologies using both the instrument-intensive techniques such as mass spectrometry (MS) and screening techniques notably immunoassays have progressed significantly in recent years. This has led to the proliferation of techniques capable of detecting multiple groups of mycotoxins using a variety of approaches. Despite considerable progress, there are still challenges for routine monitoring of multiple toxins. Some of these challenges, such as the need for extraction of multiple analytes with widely different polarities, and the potential for co-extraction of matrix components that can interfere with the quantification of the measurands are independent of the analytical technique (MS or immunoassay) used. Because of the wide variety of analytical platforms used for multi-toxin analysis, there are also specific challenges related to certain analytical platforms. For immunosensors, the unique challenges include the reusability of sensors, and for chromatography-based assays, they include the selection of appropriate calibration approaches. To simplify the latter task, we showed that response factors for aflatoxins remained stable over longer periods of time when using chromatographic methods with optical detection. This offers the potential of simplification, provided the use of relative response factors is accepted as a working approach. This must, however, be verified by a larger community of laboratories. In this article, we seek to describe further the challenges associated with multi-toxin analysis and articulate how such challenges have recently been addressed.

STROKA Joerg;  MARAGOS C; 

2016-12-22

WAGENINGEN ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS

JRC105095

1875-0710,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC105095,   

10.3920/WMJ2016.2038,