Current role of modern chromatography and mass spectrometry in the analysis of mycotoxins in food

The constant surveillance regarding how much safe the food we are intaking has become a critical point in current science since its quality directly affects our health. Several chemicals are used to control plague, diseases, or as health promoters in crops and animals. Although the main classes being controlled are pesticides and veterinary drugs, considerable attention has been targeted to mycotoxins in the last decades. Most of these naturally occurring toxins are very poisonous for humans by causing carcinogenic effects, nervous system disturbances, gastrointestinal disorders, and other diseases. For these reasons, analytical chemistry plays a fundamental role in monitoring mycotoxins' presence in food matrices. Within such a context, the application of the most recent advancements obtained in liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry, and the coupling of those techniques, as well as its more relevant characteristics for screening and quantitative analysis of mycotoxins, are discussed in detail. As occur with other tools applied to mycotoxin analysis, liquid chromatography has evolved to faster, more efficient, and environmentally friendly separations, involving ultra high-performance, miniaturized (capillary and nano-LC) and analytical and preparative multidimensional techniques. In the same way, mass spectrometry has been given due attention, discussing its most efficient ionization modes, mass analyzers, and their coupling with LC. Finally, applications dealing with mycotoxins' determination in food, including vegetables, animals, and processed samples, are presented. In this way, the last five years were preferentially considered the focus without excluding some significant earlier achievements.