Liquid Chromatography for the Determination of Mycotoxins in Foods

Traditionally mycotoxins are mainly determined by immunoassay screening methods or by single compound chromatographic analytical methods, based on immunoaffinity column cleanup followed by a separation step using thin layer chromatography (TLC), gas chromatography (GC) or liquid chromatography (LC), which were coupled to conventional detectors such as electron capture detection (ECD), fluorescence or UV-visible detection. In some cases, especially when fluorescence detection was used, it was necessary to include a pre- or post-column derivatisation step in order to increase the detection capabilities of the analytical method. However, the application of hyphenated chromatographic techniques, especially LC coupled to mass spectrometry (MS) and LC-MS/MS, has several advantages including simple treatment, due to further clean up procedures with immunoaffinity columns can be avoided, rapid determination and high sensitivity.