Mycotoxins are the toxic secondary metabolites produced by many species of microscopic filamentary fungi occurring on field cereals, including barley. There is a trend toward the simplification of sample preparation procedures as much as possible. Full spectral data acquisition techniques are also preferred because of their ease of usage, along with the possibility of retrospective archived data mining. We introduce a multi-mycotoxin method for analysis of 32 mycotoxins in beer based on very simple sample preparation and UHPLC coupled with full spectral Orbitrap MS detection.

Mycotoxins are potentially toxic secondary metabolites produced by different species of fungi. The main relevant species occurring on cereals are Penicillium sp., Fusarium sp. and Aspergillus sp. The fungal contamination can either occur on the field or during storage. For cereals and baby food, the European Union (EU) legislation currently sets maximum levels (ML) for key mycotoxins. We describe a simple and fast multi-mycotoxin method that covers the legislated mycotoxins as well as 5 metabolites.

The Thermo Scientific UltiMate 3000 HPLC system is applied for the analysis of yellow dye in breakfast cereal. The separation is performed on a Thermo Scientific Acclaim 120 C18 HPLC column, with UV detection at 427, 508 and 625 nm.

The Thermo Scientific UltiMate 3000 HPLC system is applied for the analysis of red dye in breakfast cereal. The separation is performed on a Thermo Scientific Acclaim 120 C18 HPLC column, with UV detection at 427, 508 and 625 nm.

The Thermo Scientific UltiMate 3000 HPLC system is applied for the analysis of FD&C blue #1 and #2 dyes in blueberry-flavored breakfast cereal. The separation is performed on a Thermo Scientific Acclaim 120 C18 column. The cereal sample was ground, extracted and filtered prior to analysis.