State of the art of trichothecenes analysis.

Methods to analyze trichothecenes should be fast, reliable and economical. The known methods can be divided into two categories: the 'instrumental methods' as gas chromatography (GC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and the so called 'fast methods' like thin layer chromatography (TLC), enzyme-linked immunosorbant analyses (ELISA) and flow through immunoassays. The most frequently used instrumental methods for the determination of deoxynivalenol (DON), HT-2- and T2-toxin in cereals and cereal products are based on gas chromatography with electron capture detectors or mass spectrometric (MS) detectors. More than 70% of the literature published in the last decade focuses on these techniques. Recently, high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection and with mass spectrometric detection have gained importance. Up to now, a method which is able to detect types A and B trichothecenes simultaneously with a sufficiently low limit of detection is lacking, even though methods are published which have at least the same clean up step.