Food Standards Agency
Saturday 4 July 2009
Safer food better business banner
AZ-Directory
What's NewRSS
What is RSS?Listen
Listen to this siteFriday 7 July 2006
The aim of this study was to develop a robust method for fumonisin determination, validated for use in a wide range of matrices, which achieves a limit of quantification of 20 μg/kg for each fumonisin.
Study Duration : June 2005 to June 2006
Fumonisins are a class of Fusarium mycotoxins that frequently occur in grains, particularly maize, intended for food production. The most significant members of the group are the FB1, FB2 & FB3 mycotoxins, which have been associated with fatal disease in animals and they are possibly correlated with oesophageal cancer.
The fumonisins present in foods fall into two categories: the compounds that are originally present in the grains (parent fumonisins) and the hydrolysed fumonisins that are produced from the parental compounds during the processing steps. It is believed that an amount of the fumonisins are also bound to the food matrix or masked in such a way that they are non-extracted and non-detectable but may still be released in the gastrointestinal tract.
The highly toxic fumonisin mycotoxins (FB1, FB2 and FB3) frequently occur in maize that is intended for food production in the UK. These mycotoxins are regularly detected in maize-based foods. Quantitative analysis of these toxins is difficult, with analytical results prone to vary between laboratories, sometimes by orders of magnitude.
It is important that the methods used for the surveillance of mycotoxins give an accurate measure of the amount of that mycotoxin in the raw material or foods tested, so that people's exposure to that toxin can be determined accurately and managed.
Effectively the aim of this research project is to develop an improved method of quantitatively analysing maize-based foodstuffs for fumonisins.
The project will examine and optimise extraction of fumonisins prior to examination of clean-up. This challenge includes full extraction of the parent fumonisins present in raw materials and food products, extraction of any hydrolysed fumonisins from food products and extraction of any bound fumonisin.
This extraction optimisation will identify the most appropriate conditions (sample preparation, pH, extraction solvent and process). After this, investigation of sample preparation/clean-up techniques will be carried out. The whole method (extraction, clean-up, and end determination) will be assessed to demonstrate the performance parameters. These must meet specified EC mycotoxin method parameters to be judged acceptable. The sample types studied will be selected to reflect both UK consumption patterns and proposed regulations.
The results of this study have shown that the commercial analytical standards for parental fumonisins are satisfactory in terms of purity and stability, while there are no available commercial standards for hydrolysed fumonisins. The development of an end determination technique using liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry (tandem) (LC/MS/MS) allowed for the simultaneous determination and direct analysis of sample extracts of parent and hydrolysed fumonisins without the need for clean up. The work undertaken showed that the conventional extraction of fumonisins in processed foods does not extract all the fumonisin species present. To recover total fumonisin, hydrolysis of the whole food sample would be required for the subsequent determination of hydrolysed fumonisins (bound/hidden).
Overall, the method developed in this project achieved the method performance parameters required by EC legislation.
Find out what our other sites have to offer