Recent Insights into Sample Pretreatment Methods for Mycotoxins in Different Food Matrices: A Critical Review on Novel Materials

Abstract

Mycotoxins pollution is a global concern, and can pose a serious threat to human health. People and livestock eating contaminated food will encounter acute and chronic poisoning symptoms, such as carcinogenicity, acute hepatitis, and a weakened immune system. In order to prevent or reduce the exposure of human beings and livestock to mycotoxins, it is necessary to screen mycotoxins in different foods efficiently, sensitively, and selectively. Proper sample preparation is very important for the separation, purification, and enrichment of mycotoxins from complex matrices. This review provides a comprehensive summary of mycotoxins pretreatment methods since 2017, including traditionally used methods, solid-phase extraction (SPE)-based methods, liquid-liquid extraction (LLE)-based methods, matrix solid phase dispersion (MSPD), QuEChERS, and so on. The novel materials and cutting-edge technologies are systematically and comprehensively summarized. Moreover, we discuss and compare the pros and cons of different pretreatment methods and suggest a prospect.

Quantification, Prevalence, and Pretreatment Methods of Mycotoxins in Groundnuts and Tree Nuts: An Update

“…Depending on the food matrix of the treated samples, clean-up and extraction steps could be combined into a single step or separated, as is the case with nut sample analysis [40]. The extraction step, followed by a clean-up step, helps to reduce the matrix effect that may occur in mycotoxin analysis, which increases the selectivity and accuracy [41,42]. The matrix effect refers to the influence of components other than mycotoxins on the analysis.…”

“…with nut sample analysis [40]. The extraction step, followed by a clean-up step, helps to reduce the matrix effect that may occur in mycotoxin analysis, which increases the selectivity and accuracy [41,42]. The matrix effect refers to the influence of components other than mycotoxins on the analysis.…”

“…Solid-phase extraction (SPE) is a widely used method for pretreating nut samples to analyze mycotoxins [42]. It was introduced in the 1970s [2] and relies on chromatographic principles, utilizing a sorbent material to retain mycotoxins during sample loading [41].…”

“…The process involves washing to remove interfering substances, followed by elution of the analytes using a solvent for further analysis [59]. SPE method relies on various sorbents with different bonding phases for analyte retention [42]. These include C 18 and C 8 for nonpolar compounds, florisil for polar compounds, ion-exchange cartridges like propyl sulfonic acid (PRS), and additional adsorbents like immunoaffinity columns (IACs) and Oasis HLB [1,41,42].…”

“…SPE method relies on various sorbents with different bonding phases for analyte retention [42]. These include C 18 and C 8 for nonpolar compounds, florisil for polar compounds, ion-exchange cartridges like propyl sulfonic acid (PRS), and additional adsorbents like immunoaffinity columns (IACs) and Oasis HLB [1,41,42]. In many studies, C 18 cartridge was used for nut extraction prior to mycotoxin analysis using techniques such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) [35,50,55,60,61].…”