Monitoring Alternaria toxins in Italian food to support upcoming regulation

ABSTRACT

The collection of occurrence data on Alternaria toxins in food and feed across the European countries is required since 2012 by the European Commission, endorsing the relevant scientific opinion by the EFSA CONTAM Panel. Within this framework, occurrence data for Alternaria toxins (Alternariol, Alternariol monomethyl ether, Tenuazonic acid, Tentoxin, and Altenuene) in 97 samples of cereal foods, tomato products, and sunflower seeds have been provided as requested by the Italian national monitoring programme (years 2017–2020). To this purpose, an LC-MS/MS method was set up and validated, obtaining fit for purpose sensitivity, recoveries (70–120%), repeatability (≤20%) and within laboratory reproducibility (≤26%). Occurrence data showed that oilseeds were the most contaminated food group with levels of Tenuazonic acid up to 16752 µg/kg and Tentoxin up to 570 µg/kg, whereas for the other mycotoxin/commodities combinations, the percentage of left censored data (below the limit of quantification) ranged from 74 to 100%.

KEYWORDS:

• Alternaria toxins
• LC-MS/MS
• isotopically labelled internal standards
• Italy
• occurrence data
• tomato products
• sunflowers seeds
• grain products
• national monitoring programmes
• unregulated mycotoxins

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Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Italian Ministry of Health [IZSUM 08/16 RC].