Preparation of a broad-spectrum anti-zearalenone and its primary analogues antibody and its application in an indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay

A broad-spectrum monoclonal antibody (mAb)-based indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ic-ELISA) has been developed for rapidly screening zearalenone (ZEN) and its primary analogues in various samples using an easy sample preparation procedure. Primarily, a group-specific mAb, 6C2, was produced, which had IC50 values for ZEN, α-zearalenol, β-zearalenol, α-zearalanol, β-zearalanol and zearalanone of 114.0, 127.4, 290.4, 114.9, 205.6 and 257.1 ng L−1, respectively. The limit of detection and limit of quantitation of this method for ZEN and its five primary analogues in various matrix samples ranged from 114.2 to 812.3 ng L−1 and 237.1 to 1653.9 ng L−1, respectively. The recoveries of the above samples spiked with ZEN and its five primary analogues were in the range of 62.9–113.6%. The CVs were less than 13.2%. A good correlation (R2 = 0.995) between the ic-ELISA results and the HPLC-MS/MS results for swine feeds supported the reliability of the developed ic-ELISA.