Determination of trichothecene mycotoxins in wheat by use of supercritical fluid extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection or gas chromatography with electron capture detection.

The extraction behaviour of the Fusarium mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON) and some related type B trichothecenes from spiked seasand, spiked wheat flour and naturally contaminated wheat flour with modified supercritical CO2 has been investigated and optimized under several conditions. The extraction fluid was decompressed over a solid-phase trap and the amount of deposited analytes was determined by HPLC-diode array detection (DAD) or GC-electron capture detection (ECD) without any further clean-up. Recovery rates as high as 90.1 +/- 10.7% were achieved for spiked wheat samples and 53.0 +/- 3.2% for naturally contaminated samples. The performance of the optimized supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) method was compared with an already well established analytical method employing extraction on a rotary shaker in combination with Mycosep clean-up. Moreover, the SFE procedure developed for naturally DON contaminated wheat was employed for the simultaneous extraction of 5 type B trichothecenes by GC-ECD. This work represents the first successful approach in obtaining an SFE-method for the extraction of Fusarium mycotoxins from wheat with reasonable recoveries and good precision.