A new methodology for the analysis of total deoxynivalenol, dissolved and adsorbed on cell walls, in microbiological culture assays

Deoxynivalenol (DON) is a mycotoxin mainly produced by Fusarium graminearum and Fusarium culmorum and is commonly found in cereals such as wheat, barley, oats, and their derivatives. Scientists have been working on different strategies for DON detoxification, with biological detoxification being an approach with growing interest. When evaluating the use of microorganisms for mycotoxin detoxification, different phenomena can occur, namely, biotransformation (by microorganism metabolism and by interaction with extracellular cell proteins) and adsorption on cell walls, both of which can be present. In this study, a fast, simple, reliable, and inexpensive method for total DON quantification (dissolved and adsorbed) in bacterial culture assays is presented. This method can be used in screenings designed for searching DON-biodegrading microorganisms without requiring the analysis of the metabolites produced. This method has a good recovery (80.2%), reproducibility (3.2%) and low limit of quantification (0.60 μg/ml) that allows quantification under a wide range of DON concentrations in microbiological culture assays.