Acoustic technique for the monitoring of deoxynivalenol (DON) in cereals

Abstract

Monitoring of deoxynivalenol (DON) in cereals is expensive and is often almost omitted because of its high cost. Ubiquitary occurring DON as a marker of trichothecenes produced by Fusarium species is considered as on important safety and economic issue. As it stands now with the EU legislation the consumer is unnecessary put at risk with this contaminant in food. There are, however, ways and means as getting around the problem to protect the consumer by using a novel, fast, non-invasive and cheap acoustic technique to detect DON in cereal grains with in-and on- line capabilities. The present paper reports on the application of an acoustic method for the screening of DON in wheat at point of harvest and on the confirmation of its performance with state of the art wet chemistry methads such as ELlSA. This acoustic technique is completely different from currentiy applied wet chemistry techniques and is based on acoustlc wave's penetrating through and/or reflected by air-filled porous materials such as unconsolidated solid beads of grain. High correlations between DON contaminated wheat samples with different amounts of shriveled kernels in mixtures with wholesome kernels determined by the acoustic technique have been found. The statistical analysis showed that the acoustlc method gives sufficienty precise results in the quantuative determination of DON in grain. Because of its in- and on-line capablllties the acoustic method is on excellent tool for monitoring and high throughput analysis of DON in grain. Analysis of wheat samples contaminated with differcnt levels of DON from different years (2004-2006 and 2009) grown in Lithuania showed that climatically conditions at time of flowering (wet, warm and a high relative humidity) seem to increase the occurrence of DON. It is too premature as to stale that the increased amount of DON over three successive years is related to climate change.