The lager yeast Saccharomyces pastorianus removes and transforms Fusarium trichothecene mycotoxins during fermentation of brewer’s wort

•Lager yeast Saccharomyces pastorianus was tolerant up to 10,000μg/L DON, HT2 or T2.•At the end of a four-day brewing fermentation 9–34% of the toxins were removed.•Dosed DON3Glc was not reactivated into its toxic precursor DON.•(De)acetylation, glucosylation and sulfonation were the major metabolic reactions. An investigation was conducted to determine the fate of deoxynivalenol, deoxynivalenol-3-glucoside, HT-2 toxin and T-2 toxin, during a four-day fermentation with the lager yeast Saccharomyces pastorianus. The influence of excessive mycotoxin concentrations on yeast growth, productivity and viability were also assessed. Mycotoxins were dosed at varying concentrations to 11.5° Plato wort. Analysis of yeast revealed that presence of the toxins even at concentrations up to 10,000μg/L had little or no effect on sugar utilisation, alcohol production, pH, yeast growth or cell viability. Of the dosed toxin amounts 9–34% were removed by the end of fermentation, due to physical binding and/or biotransformation by yeast. Deoxynivalenol-3-glucoside was not reverted to its toxic precursor during fermentation. Processing of full-scan liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight-mass spectrometry (LC–QTOF–MS) data with MetaboLynx™ and subsequent LC–QTOF–MS/MS measurements resulted in annotation of several putative metabolites. De(acetylation), glucosylation and sulfonation were the main metabolic pathways activated.