The 1st Mycokey congress, organized by the research platform MYTOX, was held in the historic city of Ghent (Belgium) and attended by representatives of universities and the industry. The congress focused on the reduction of the global mycotoxin presence in the feed and food chain and several African and Asian partners of the MYTOX platform were also present. This strengthens the global knowledge on mycotoxins as well as the effective cooperation.
For more than five years, Orffa is working on a complete mycotoxin binder composition, tailored to the co-occurrence of multiple mycotoxins in feed and reducing the negative impact on the health status of production animals. Multiple in vitro trials were performed to assess the binding capacity of single ingredients and formed the basis for the development of a commercial preparation, Excential Toxin Plus, consisting of 5 ingredients. This composition was benchmarked against 19 commercial available preparations (including 6 premium quality products). The in vitro experiments were designed in close collaboration with MYTOX and executed by the Laboratory of Food Analysis (Ghent University, Belgium).
The benchmark study shows that all commercial products tested, show a very high binding towards aflatoxins and enniatin B. In comparison, trichothecenes are difficult to bind at any pH. A very high recovery in the supernatants can be distinguished for DON, suggesting biotransformation by any binder into less toxic metabolites is minimal. Fumonisins and ochratoxins are also difficult to bind, especially at pH 7 and the tested products show a large variety in the binding of zearalenone. In conclusion, there are differences between commercial mycotoxin binders for feed applications, but some binders have a higher binding efficiency towards specific mycotoxins.
