Acoustic Testing for the Most Important Mycotoxins in Grain

Abstract

Cereals are important source of Fusarium mycotoxins such as DON or Aspergillus species producing aflatoxin on corn. Both attract worldwide attention because of the significant economic losses associated with their impact on human health, animal productivity and trade (CAST, 2003). Both fungi on cereals are hard to master because their growth is mainly the result of weather conditions. The combination of moisture, temperature and relative humidity at the time of flowering plays an important role through the occurence of head blight or scab on wheat for example. Although DON is not as toxic as aflatoxin (Norred, 2000) its occurrence and exposure is greater and often the Total Daily Intake (TDI) is exceeded (Leblance et al., 2004). Children and the elderly are especially at risk from the effects of mycotoxins. Cereal-based foods and drinks are the main contributors to this risk. The EU has been working for almost two decades on the harmonization of mycotoxin standarts for foods, based on international toxicological evaluations and established regulations including limits for thr commodities at stake and methods of analysis and sampling (FAO, 2004). Because of the high cost of invasive testing methods industry has often been reluctant to carry out representative sampling for food safety purposes. Invasive mycotoxin testing procedures generally consists of three steps: 1) a sample is taken from a lot, 2) the sample is ground and a sub-sample is removed from the comminuted sample, and (3) the mycotoxin is extracted from the comminutted sub-sample and quantified by an invasive laborious wet chemistry method (Figure 10.3).[...]