Infrared spectroscopy for rapid and green on-site mycotoxin screening

The safety of our food system is ensured by tens of thousands of mycotoxin analyses carried out per year. Established mycotoxin screening methods require complex lab-based sample handling procedures besides relying on consumables like organic solvents or plastic disposables. The environmental impact of these unavoidable mycotoxin surveys must be reduced by a transformation from lab-based to on-site screening. Infrared (IR) spectroscopy (IRS) is inherently green due to its non-destructive character and thus ideal for rapid screening, as hardly any consumables or sample handling is required. In fact, more and more portable IR spectrometer become available facilitating on-site analysis. IR spectroscopy, however, is limited to track fungi induced sample changes, requiring its combination with reference analysis. The mycotoxin level of the sample, obtained by techniques like liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is thus correlated with the corresponding IR spectra using chemometrics. Within this project the feasibility to use portable and handheld IR spectrometers for mycotoxin analysis in intact grain will be evaluated. Furthermore, IRS will be established as a rapid, green and easy to use alternative to current screening methods. In the end, by the combination of LC-MS/MS with IRS, multi-toxin IR-based screening approaches are going to be explored. Thereby the current state of the art of mycotoxin analysis will be substantial advanced towards easy and rapid on-site screening.