In vitro study of the efficacy of mycotoxins degradation by feed enzymes

Abstract

Providing healthy and safe food in terms of mycotoxicological safety is an imperative for not only good and sustainable livestock production, but also for the population that consumes food of both plant and animal origin. Climate change in the temperate regions of southern Europe has led to frequent occurrence of afl atoxins, deoxynivalenol and zearalenone in cereals. In order to reduce harmful eff ects of these toxins on animal health as well as to avoid large economic losses, various feed additives are increasingly being used. All of them must fi rst of all be safe, and then have certain effi ciency in the fi ght against mycotoxins. Although in vivo experiments are mandatory to assess the effi cacy, in vitro test off ers the advantage of rapid screening of the effi cacy of a large number of food additives. In this paper, the effi ciency of two commercial products belonging to the enzyme group for animal nutrition was investigated for degradation of afl atoxin B1, zearalenone and deoxynivalenol using in vitro experiments. For this purpose, two diff erent methodologies were used according to the recommendation of the enzyme manufacturer. Th e percentage of mycotoxin degradation was recorded by high pressure liquid chromatography and ELISA methods. One of the tested enzymes showed a very high effi ciency in zearalenone degradation being as much as 96%. Both tested enzyme samples showed similar percentage of afl atoxin B1 degradation (about 35%). Deoxynivalenol was not signifi cantly degradable under the applied test conditions.