Rapid and advanced tools for mycotoxin analysis: a review

The problems associated with mycotoxin contamination of foods and feeds are well established and, in many cases, have been known for a long time. Consequently, the techniques for detecting known mycotoxins are quite advanced and range from methods for directly detecting the toxins themselves, based upon physical characteristics of the toxins, to methods for indirectly detecting the toxins, such as immunoassays. This review focuses on recent technologies that can be used to detect mycotoxins and, as such, is not a comprehensive review of the mycotoxin analytical literature. Rather, the intent is to survey the range of technologies from those that are instrument intensive such as modern chromatographic methods to those that require no instrumentation, such as certain immunoassays and biosensors. In particular, mass spectrometric techniques using ambient ionization offer the intriguing possibility of non-destructive sampling and detection. The potential application of one such technique, desorption electrospray ionization (DESI), is demonstrated for fumonisin B1 on maize. While methods for detecting mycotoxins are quite advanced, the need remains for assays with increased throughput, for the exploration of novel detection technologies, and for the comprehensive validation of such technologies as they continue to be developed.