A review of recent trends in applications of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry for determination of mycotoxins

Monitoring, control, risk assessment, and prevention of contaminants in food and in feed are important issues associated with public health, agricultural production, food processing, and trade. Food and feed safety, as well as carry over of contaminants into animal tissue, are of major public concern nowadays, especially if considering the global challenge and world trade liberalization. Mycotoxins are toxic secondary metabolites of moulds and one of the major contaminants of agricultural products. Their presence in food and feed is harmful to the health of humans and animals. Therefore, analytical methods for the identification and determination of mycotoxins need to be sensitive, selective, and robust to provide accurate data especially for monitoring, risk assessment, quality control, and research. The application of hyphenated techniques especially HPLC-MS and HPLC-MS-MS has, in many cases, revolutionized the analysis of mycotoxins. The LC-MS methods offer a new tool for the sensitive, selective, and accurate analysis of contaminants in agricultural commodities. Tandem mass spectrometry provides the maximum scale of confidence in analyte identification. However, LC-MS-MS is definitely not a trouble free solution for the analysis of mycotoxins in complex biological matrices. Sample clean-up and chromatography still remain the important and necessary steps for obtaining reliable analytical results. This paper provides some general aspects regarding mycotoxins in food and emphasizes the analytical techniques with regard to LC-MS technology.