Mycotoxin and Metabolite Analytics Platform for Monitoring in view of Climate Change

Over the past two decades, our group has pioneered a multi analyte LC–MS/MS platform that enables high throughput, dilute and shoot analysis and broad spectrum quantification of hundreds of mycotoxins and other fungal secondary metabolites, including emerging and masked forms. Through method harmonization, matrix robust calibration, and rigorous validation, we have established routine, cost effective surveillance across complex commodity streams in food, feed, and novel plant based materials. The need for expanded monitoring is urgent. Climate change is reshaping fungal ecology—altering species distributions, stress responses, and toxin profiles (e.g., Fusarium, Alternaria, Aspergillus)—while new plant based foodstuffs and feed ingredients introduce unfamiliar substrates and processing pathways that affect contamination risk. Continuous occurrence monitoring, co exposure assessment, and rapid response are essential to protect supply chains, inform risk management, and guide mitigation strategies. Beyond surveillance, comprehensive fungal metabolite profiling advances molecular biology by linking metabolomes to biosynthetic gene clusters, regulatory networks, and environmental triggers. These datasets accelerate discovery of pathway regulation, enable functional annotation, and provide biomarkers for strain selection and process control. This internal project will capitalize on our established platform to sustain and expand comprehensive monitoring. It will provide flexible support for personnel and materials not covered elsewhere, leveraging institutional resources. Expected outputs include (i) extended, validated high throughput LC–MS/MS methods; (ii) occurrence datasets focused on climate sensitive and innovation relevant matrices; and (iii) targeted metabolomic workflows to underpin collaborative molecular studies—ensuring agility, quality, and impact across our research portfolio.