Influence of the heat treatment on the degradation of the minor Fusarium mycotoxin beauvericin

Beauvericin (BEA) is a bioactive compound produced by the secondary metabolism of several Fusarium strains and known to have various biological activities. This study investigated the degradation of the minor Fusarium mycotoxin BEA present in the concentration of 5 mg/kg in a model solution and in different crispy breads produced with different flours typologies (corn, hole, wheat, durum wheat, soy and rice) during the heat treatment carried out in an oven at three different temperatures of 160, 180 and 200 °C and at 3, 6, 10, 15 and 20 min incubation. The concentration of the bioactive compound studied, analyzed with the technique of the liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS), decreased in the experiment carried out in the model solution from 2.89 ± 0.13 mg/kg of the assay at 160 °C for 3 min until the complete degradation at 200 °C during 20 min incubation. In the experiments carried out using the crispy breads prepared with different kind of flours, as system to simulate a food preparation, the percentage of BEA degradation, resulted variable from 20 to 90%, with no a significative differences showed in the use of the different flour matrices. Also a metabolite of the thermical degradation of the mycotoxins BEA was identified using the LC–MS in the full scan mode.