Mycotoxins are defined as toxic secondary metabolites of molds. The term “emerging mycotoxins”, while often used nowadays, is not so clearly defined. One approach defines these compounds as “mycotoxins, which are neither routinely determined, nor legislatively regulated; however, the evidence of their incidence is rapidly increasing” (Vaclavikova et al., Food Chemistry 136, 2013). It is the belief of the authors that the reasons for the increasing incidence of certain mycotoxins can be grouped into the following categories: a) improved analytical techniques (e.g. multi-mycotoxin methods), which allow the determination of a large number of mycotoxins at a very high sensitivity b) newly detected toxins (e.g. NX-toxins, or masked mycotoxins) c) “neglected” mycotoxins (e.g. enniatins or moniliformin), which have been discovered already some time ago, but not ranked as the most important toxins and therefore are not (yet) regulated d) “surprising” finding of known mycotoxins in parts of the world, in which they were not encountered before (e.g. due to climate change) All of the above categories have in common that liquid chromatography – mass spectrometry (LC-MS) based methods play a major role in their discovery or in the reliable determination of their occurrence. The rapid development of analytical techniques allows to obtain a broad picture regarding fungal contamination of food. By far not all of the detected compounds are toxicologically relevant and therefore of little or no health concern to consumers. The aim of this presentation is to exemplarily highlight recent discoveries regarding emerging mycotoxins and to critically discuss their potential impact.

Emerging mycotoxins: Beyond traditionally determined food contaminants

251st National Meeting (2016)

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