Individual and Combined Occurrence of Mycotoxins in Feed Ingredients and Complete Feeds in China.

Wen-Mei Xie,Lei Zhang,De-Sheng Qi,Lv-Hui Sun,Shahid Rajput,Yong-Teng Su,Ni-Ya Zhang,Jie-Fan Dai,Meng Liu,Rui Ma,Niel Karrow,Yun Wang

doi:10.3390/toxins10030113

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the individual and combined contamination of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), zearalenone (ZEN) and deoxynivalenol (DON) in feedstuffs from different Provinces of China between 2016 and 2017. A total of 1569 samples, including 742 feed ingredients and 827 complete pig feed samples, were collected from various regions of China for mycotoxins analysis. The results showed that individual occurrence rates of AFB1, ZEN, and DON were more than 83.3%, 88%, and 74.5%, respectively, in all the tested samples. DON was the most prevalent contaminant, followed by ZEN and AFB1, with the average concentrations ranging from 450.0–4381.5 μg/kg, 2.3–729.2 μg/kg, and 1.3–10.0 μg/kg, respectively. Notable, 38.2%, 10.8%, and 0.6% of complete pig feeds were contaminated with DON, ZEN, and AFB1 over China’s regulatory limits, respectively. Moreover, over 75.0% analyzed samples were co-contaminated with two or three mycotoxins. In conclusion, the current study revealed that the feedstuffs in China were severely contaminated with DON, followed by ZEN and AFB1 during the past two years. These findings highlight the importance of monitoring mycotoxins in livestock feed and implementing feed management and bioremediation strategies to reduce mycotoxin exposure.

Highlights

Mycotoxins are a large group of fungal secondary metabolites, which are toxic to both animals and humans and that are mainly produced by five genera: Aspergillus, Fusarium, Penicillium, Claviceps and Alternaria [1]
10 samples, including 6 corn, 1 wheat flour and 3 complete pig feed from 2016, which account for 1.0% of all the analyzed feed ingredients and complete feeds, were contaminated with Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) at levels exceeding Chinese safety standard concentrations (Table 1)
This study indicates that the investigated feed ingredients and complete pig feeds in China during the past 2 years were severely contaminated with Fusarium mycotoxins, especially DON; and the government, feed company and farmers need to be aware of this

Summary

Introduction

Mycotoxins are a large group of fungal secondary metabolites, which are toxic to both animals and humans and that are mainly produced by five genera: Aspergillus, Fusarium, Penicillium, Claviceps and Alternaria [1]. As primarily produced by Aspergillus, AFB1 is the most toxic mycotoxin, possessing hepatotoxic, mutagenic, carcinogenic, and teratogenic properties in many species of animals; it is has been classified as a Group I carcinogen [5,6,7]. Both ZEN and DON are mainly produced by Fusarium. DON can induce anorexia, vomiting, and impairs immune function in various livestock species that involves inhibiting

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