The Role of Mill Machinery in Reducing DON-Toxin

Abstract

In recent years the fusarium infection and accompanying DON–toxin contamination caused serious losses in the wheat growing and processing. Besides decrease of average yield it was serious problem that not a small part of the growned and harvested crop was unsuitable for food and forage production or the usage was limited. This phenomena caused problem in many countries all over the world according to data of scientific literature. There is a statement in the literature also that DON-toxin content can be decreased efficiently and safely only during the cultivation of plant and the possibilities for that are very limited during processing. We wanted to prove with our experiment that it is possible to decrease DON-toxin level of wheat items by application modern equipment and machineries, wherewith the losses and the food safety risks can be minimized. During our experiment we studied the effect of two milling machine on DON toxin content. (Sortex Z color sorter and Scule Verticone intensive surface cleaner). Both modern machine can be built-in the cleaning process in the mills. In our investigation we took samples from harvested wheat items during processing in the year of the experiment. The data were subjected to complex investigation and we evaluated them with different statistical methods. On this basis we can unequivocally state both machines are effective in reducing toxin level of basic material. In the year of the experiment the regression analysis showed that the Schule surface cleaner was more effective than the color sorting machine.