Challenges in mycotoxins determination in highly pigmented fruits

Abstract

Mycotoxins are food and feed contaminants. They exhibit high toxicity to living organisms. Therefore, their concentration in products intended for consumption should be strictly monitored. Due to the increasingly stringent standards related to mycotoxin content in food, the requirements for mycotoxin determination methods are constantly increasing. Liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is a gold standard considering the determination of mycotoxins and many other groups of compounds. However, this technique is burdened with some limitations connected to e.g. matrix effect (ME). Thus, we proposed polymeric materials that can be applied during the sample preparation step toward mycotoxins determination via LC-MS/MS. In this paper, we present the preliminary results on evaluating ME toward 8 mycotoxins before and after the clean-up of blackcurrant extract employing microspheres of 4-vinylpyridine crosslinked with trimethylolpropane trimethacrylate (poly(4VP-co-TRIM) or 1,4-dimethacryloyloxybenzene (poly(4VP-co-14DMB).