Comparison of different cooking process for the emerging mycotoxins reduction in fresh pasta

Abstract

Mycotoxins are toxic metabolites from filamentous fungi like Aspergillus spp., Penicillium spp., and Fusarium spp. There are emerging mycotoxins (enniatin A, A1, B, B1 and beauvericin) which have been discovered recently. The present study evaluates the emerging mycotoxins in fresh pasta and how different culinary treatments affect mycotoxins concentration. The analysis of 19 commercialized samples with an Ultra-Turrax extraction in acetonitrile:methanol and High Performance Liquid Chromatography tandem mass spectrometry of triple quadrupole (HPLC-MS/MS-QqQ) detection. Results show that the 84% of samples were contaminated with at least one analyzed mycotoxin. The most abundant mycotoxins were ENB and ENB1 with main concentration of 7.03 and 4.43 µg/kg respectively. The study of culinarian treatments shows that pH affects mycotoxins detoxification. Acid pH was the most effective detoxificant process, with depletions from 60% of BEA to 98% of ENA. ENA was the most sensible mycotoxin in most treatments. Easy modification of the traditional cooking process, as adding lemon juice on the boiling water, could improve food safety and decrease human exposition to mycotoxins.