Investigation of the suitability of immunochemical-based test kits for quantitative analysis of deoxynivalenol in corn-derived feed and feed ingredients.

ABSTRACT

We examined whether immunochemical-based test kits designed for quantitative analysis of deoxynivalenol (DON) screening in grain crops are applicable to corn processing by-products. Commercially available test kits (two types of immunochromatographic kits and three types of ELISA kits) were used to assay three types of corn processing by-products and mixed feed. The results obtained with some kits were significantly different from those of LC-MS analysis. Since the differences might be caused by insufficient extraction of DON from samples, the extraction time of all kits was set to be 20 minutes, based on a study of the dependence of the amount of DON extracted on the shaking time. Moreover, the extract of corn processing by-products was acidic, resulting in inhibition of the antigen-antibody reaction, so neutralization and centrifugation processes were introduced to prevent denaturation of antibody. After these modifications, the recovery for all kits in assays of corn gluten meal was within the range of 80-120%, and all kits showed acceptable accuracy. The relative standard deviation (RSD) of repeatability tests for all kits was less than 11.3% for analyses of both corn processing by-products and mixed feeds, indicating good precision. The above results showed that the kits studied were applicable to the quantitative assay of DON in corn processing by-products and mixed feed after modifications as described in this paper.