Analysis of sterigmatocystin in cereals, animal feed, seeds, beer and cheese by immunoaffinity column clean-up and HPLC and LC-MS/MS quantification

A method is reported for the analysis of sterigmatocystin in various food and feed matrices using a commercial sterigmatocystin immunoaffinity column (IAC) for sample clean-up prior to HPLC analysis by UV with mass spectrometric detection (LC-MS/MS). Cereals (wheat, oats, rye, maize and rice), sunflower seeds and animal feed were spiked with sterigmatocystin at levels from 0.75 to 50 μg kg−1 to establish method performance. Using acetonitrile/water extraction followed by IAC clean-up, and analysis by HPLC with detection at 325 nm, recoveries ranged from 68% to 106%, with repeatability from 4.2% to 17.5%. The limit of quantification with UV detection in these matrices was 1.5 μg kg−1. For the analysis of beer and cheese the sample preparation prior to IAC clean-up was changed to accommodate the different properties of the matrix, prior to analysis by LC-MS/MS. For beer and cheese spiked at 5.0 μg kg−1 the recoveries were 94% and 104%, and precision (RSDs) were 1.9% and 2.9% respectively. The limits of quantification by LC-MS/MS in beer and cheese were 0.02 and 0.6 μg kg−1 respectively. The sterigmatocystin IAC was demonstrated to provide an efficient clean-up of various matrices to enable this mycotoxin to be determined by either HPLC with UV detection or LC-MS/MS.