Early detection of mycotoxins: analysis of their volatile precursors

JUAN R. GIROTTI; M. PATRICIA JUÁREZ; ISMAEL MALBRÁN; GLADYS A. LORI

Rosario, Argentina

Conferencia; Primer Conferencia Latinoamericana International Association for Cereal Science and Technology (ICC); 2007

International Association for Cereal Science and Technology

The presence of mycotoxin-producing fungi in wheat production is a serious health and economic issue. Fusarium graminearum Schwabe, the fungal pathogen associated with the Fusarium head blight (FHB), contaminates agricultural crops and commodities with trichothecenes, mostly deoxynivalenol (DON) and its acetyl-derivatives. Current techniques available for mycotoxin detection require an extended time lag between sampling and the corresponding sanitary report, and include different clean-up steps and eventually derivatization. The metabolic pathway of these mycotoxins involves the formation of volatile intermediates (sesquiterpenes) as summarized in Fig. 1 (Magan-Evans,2000). Solid phase microextraction (SPME) is presently the more widespread technique to detect trace amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOC). Fusarium sp. VOC were first extracted by SPME by Jelen et al. (1997). Our main objective was: 1) to measure the dynamics of F. graminearum VOC production using the SPME technique coupled to capillary gas cromatography (CGC) with flame ionization detection. 2) to evaluate VOC profiling (fingerprints) as markers for early detection of mycotoxins.