Mycotoxins are secondary métabolites produced by various fungiwhich can contaminate certain agricultural products. These substances present a toxicity to very weak concentration for the man and the animal when they are introduced into the body.
Toxic effects of mycotoxins vary according to considered animal species, to its age and to its health. All the mycotoxins have not the same effects, nor the same toxicity. Furthermore, when they are present in mixture in a food, their effects can multiply. Finally, the quantity of ingested mycotoxins and the frequency of poisoning are also parameters not to neglect.
In cereals, we distinguish two groups of mycotoxins:
- those who are produced in the field, and who result mostly from a contamination of grains by the Fusarium head blight;
- those who are produced during the stocking, and who result from a contamination of grains by fungi which have other requirements of temperature and humidity.
As a general rule, Fusarium sp. produces not only one but several mycotoxins the toxic effects of which were put in evidence on cattle, animals in laboratory even on man in case of food poisoning.
To estimate the rate of mycotoxins in harvests, one uses techniques of dosage which can be distributed into 2 groups:
- analytical techniques, among which the most used for the dosage of mycotoxins is the technique HPLC (« High Performance Liquid Chromatography »);- immunological and Elisa technologies (« Enzyme Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay »).
