Immune‐affinity monolithic array with chemiluminescent detection for mycotoxins in barley

BACKGROUND Mycotoxins are produced by fungi as secondary metabolites. They often multi‐contaminate food and feed commodities posing a health risk to humans and animals. Fast and easy multiplex screening could be thought as a useful tool for detection of multi‐contaminated food and feed commodities. RESULTS A highly sensitive immune‐affinity monolithic arrays for detecting the mycotoxins zearalenone, deoxynivalenol, T‐2 toxin, HT‐2 toxin, aflatoxins, ochratoxin A, and fumonisin B 1 were fabricated using UV induced co‐polymerisation. The mycotoxin antibodies firstly reacted with functional monomer to form antibody/functional monomer bio‐conjugates. Subsequently, the antibody/functional monomer bio‐conjugates co‐polymerised with cross‐linker to form mycotoxins immune‐affinity arrays. With optimal fabrication conditions, all mycotoxin immune‐affinity monolithic arrays exhibited a linear response spanning three orders of magnitude. And the immune‐affinity monolithic array has a low detection limit and has a good uniformity (intra‐assay CV, and inter‐assay CV both <8%). CONCLUSION The fabricated mycotoxin immune‐affinity monolithic arrays were proved as a sensitive, stable and economical tool in real food samples detection. Moreover, the mycotoxin immune‐affinity monolithic arrays would be able to minimise manipulation steps: add samples and enzyme labelled mycotoxins, and detect CL signals. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry