Mycotoxins are a family of molecules produced by molds which can contaminate a wide range of food products. Many of these toxins are regulated by the FDA because of the dangers they pose to human health. Fumonisins, produced by Fusasrium molds, are a major source of contamination in corn and other food products. While there are many fumonisins found in nature, the most abundant are fumonisin B1, fumonisin B2, and fumonisin B3. The FDA has provided guidance that the sum of these three fumonisins not exceed 4ppm for any food consumed by humans. To test for contamination, fumonisins are commonly detected spectroscopically with derivatization or by using mass spectrometry. Mass spectrometry is a very powerful tool and is well suited for the detection of fumonisin. To achieve high precision with mass spectrometry, internal standards are often used. Due to their complex natural product structures, internal standards for mycotoxins are very expensive and must be used prudently. This research uses a fully labeled 13C34 fumonisin B1 internal standard with a strong anion exchange (SAX) solid phase extraction cleanup and LC/MS detection. Long term precision is also monitored by parallel data collection of a well characterized trending sample. Before the implementation of the internal standard, fourteen sets of data were analyzed over a six-month time period and produced an average coefficient of variation of 15.6%. Fifteen sets of data have been analyzed after moving to the internal standard method, over a 14-month period, and have an average coefficient of variation of 2.7%.

Efforts to improve the long-term precision of fumonisin quantitation by LC/MS using a 13C labeled internal standard and a well characterized trending sample

2019 Fall National Meeting

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