Presence of aflatoxins in cereals from Serbia

Aflatoxins (AFs), one of the most toxic and the strongest natural carcinogens can be found in a variety of food commodities, including cereals. For that purpose, the aim of this study was to investigate occurrence of AFs (AFB1, AFG1, AFB2 and AFG2) in 130 cereal samples. AFs content was determined by direct competitive Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) method. Samples with AFs content higher than 1 μg/kg were analyzed again with confirmatory High Performance Liquid Chromatography with fluorescence detection (HPLC-FLD). Analyses showed that none of the analyzed wheat (30), barley (20), oats (20) and rye (20) samples was contaminated with AFs. On the other hand, among 40 analyzed maize samples 24 of them (60%) were contaminated in the following way: 6 (25%) samples had AFs concentration between 1 and 10 μg/kg, 14 (58%) samples between 10 and 50 μg/kg and 4 (17%) between 50 and 70.3 μg/kg. The most predominant aflatoxin was AFB1 which was detected in all contaminated maize samples. AFG1, AFB2 and AFG2 were found in 12, 5 and 1 sample, respectively. This study represents the first investigation of the occurrence of AFs in five different cereals from Serbia.