Degradation products of aflatoxin M 1 (AFM 1 ) formed by high voltage atmospheric cold plasma (HVACP) treatment

• Published in: Toxicon (Oxford) 2023-07, Vol.230, p.107160
• Main Authors: Nikmaram, Nooshin, Brückner, Lea, Cramer, Benedikt, Humpf, Hans-Ulrich, Keener, Kevin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1879-3150
• DOI: 10.1016/j.toxicon.2023.107160

Cold plasma technology is a novel non-thermal technology that has shown promising results for food decontamination and improving food safety. This study is a continuation of a previous investigation of the treatment of AFM -contaminated skim and whole milk samples by HVACP. Previous research has shown HVACP is effective in degrading aflatoxin M (AFM ) in milk. The goal of this study is to identify the degradation products of AFM after HVACP treatment in pure water. An HVACP direct treatment at 90 kV using modified air (MA65: 65% O , 30% CO , 5% N ) was performed for up to 5 min at room temperature on a 5.0 mL water sample in a Petri dish artificially contaminated with 2 μg/mL of AFM . The degradants of AFM were analyzed and their molecular formulae were elucidated by using high-performance liquid-chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry (HPLC-TOF-MS). Three main degradation products were observed and based on mass spectrometric fragmentation pathways, chemical structures for the degradation products were tentatively assigned. According to the structure-bioactivity relationship of AFM , the bioactivity of the AFM samples treated with HVACP was reduced due to the disappearance of the C8-C9 double bond in the furofuran ring in all of the degradation products.