Comparison of different clean-up procedures for the analysis of deoxynivalenol in cereal-based food and validation of a reliable HPLC method

Three different clean-up methods for the analysis of deoxynivalenol in cereals and cereal-based foods are described and compared. DON was extracted with water or acetonitrile/water (84/16, v/v) and the extracts were cleaned-up by passing either through two different immuno-affinity columns (DONtest, Vicam; DONPrep, Rhone) or a charcoal/alumina column (MycoSep, Romer Labs). Determinative analysis was performed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with diode array detection (DAD) and fluorescenic detection (FLD) after post-column derivatisation. Different parameters were optimised and possible reasons for diverse results are discussed. The final method was validated and adopted to different matrices. Best results were obtained using immunoaffinity columns for clean-up in combination with HPLC-FLD detection of the DON-derivative.