Mycotoxin formation, their toxicity and mycotoxin residue analyses in feeds.

Mycotoxins are biological seconder metabolite produced by some fungi. They cause acute or chronic mycotoxicosis in human and animal. In agricultural products, mycotoxins are produced by toxin producing fungi due to improper storage conditions during post-harvest and pre-harvest period. Some physical, chemical and biological factors affect mycotoxin production. There is a lot of toxicosis case report for human and animal in the world, particularly in less developed countries. The most harmful effect of mycotoxin is on liver and the most dangereous mycotoxin is aflatoxins. There are 3 routes of contamination of mycotoxin produced fungi, namely pre-harvest, at harvest and post-harvest. Two main routes of exposure have been identified, which are the inhalation of mycotoxins produced by fungi and the consumption of mycotoxins with food that has been spoiled by toxigenic fungi either before harvest or at storage. In recent years, some legistlation and directives on mycotoxin level in food are published by European Food Safety and European Comission. Inappropriate products and their origin, due to mycotoxin are reported in daily basis in EU Countries by means of RASFF (Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed). This review deals with economical and toxicological important mycotoxins and their residue analysis. Mycotoxin analysis, similar to pesticide analysis, are carried out by chromatography (TLC, HPLC and LC-MS) techniques and also serological techniques (ELISA and RIA). Last developments of LC/MS/MS enable application of multi-mycotoxin residue analysis. With the update EU Directives and Turkish Codex principles, some anaytical parameters such as sampling method, laboratory sample, sample preperation for mycotoxin analysis are discussed in this review. All assessments for the laboratory sample, extraction and chromatographic procedure were performed based on quality assurance and quality control.