Mycotoxins in maize silage
Special Symposium - Innovations in Food Technology (LMC Congress)
Innovations in Food Technology - Poster Session (Food - P2)
Keywords: mycotoxins, maize silage
Maize silage has become an increasing part of dairy cattle feed in Denmark during the last sixteen years. It is used as a stable part of the ration all year round. Maize and maize silage can, however, be contaminated with several diverse mycotoxins, which potentially can affect performance of cattle or be carried over into milk and meat products. Mycotoxins in maize si-lage is therefore of great concern for farmers and consumers. The most common mycotoxin producing fungi in maize silage are Penicillium roqueforti, Penicillium paneum, Monascus ruber and Byssochlamys nivea. Together they are capable of producing more than 70 known secondary metabolites and mycotoxins. To determine the occurrence of mycotoxins in Danish maize silages we are developing methods to detect mycotoxins of all the common fungal con-taminants in silage samples.
Extracts of maize silage samples spiked with mycotoxins or infected with fungi are cleaned up by solid phase extraction (SPE). To cover the huge range of possible mycotoxins with very different chemical properties both cat-ion, an-ion and reverse phase SPE has been applied. The clean extracts are analysed by LC-MS/MS. 20 mycotoxins have been selected on behalf of their occurrence, toxicity and function as markers for common fungi. In the present study clean-up and detection methods are optimised for these toxins and the methods are tested on infected silage samples.
