Interlaboratory comparison studies for the improvement of the analysis of zearalenone in Europe.

The employed analytical methods and results of a current large-scale study in the field of the analysis of zearalenone have been compared to several previous interlaboratory comparison studies. Generally, a change in the clean-up techniques could be observed. The more frequent use of immunoaffinity clean-up techniques and the employment of a common reference calibrant resulted in a considerable improvement of the agreement of results between the participating laboratories and an enhanced performance of the employed methods.