State of the art of trichothecenes analysis

Methods to analyze trichothecenes should be fast, reliable and economical. The known methods can be divided into two categories: the 'instrumental methods' as gas chromatography (GC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and the so called 'fast methods' like thin layer chromatography (TLC), enzyme-linked immunosorbant analyses (ELISA) and flow through immunoassays. The most frequently used instrumental methods for the determination of deoxynivatenol (DON), HT-2- and T2-toxin in cereals and cereal products are based on gas chromatography with electron capture detectors or mass spectrometric (MS) detectors. More than 70% of the literature published in the last decade focuses on these techniques. Recently, high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection and with mass spectrometric detection have gained importance. Up to now, a method which is able to detect types A and B trichothecenes simultaneously with a sufficiently low limit of detection is lacking, even though methods are published which have at least the same clean up step. (C) 2004 ILSI. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.