Alternaria toxins in Argentinean wheat, bran, and flour

Alternaria species have been reported to infect a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, and cereal crops. Wheat is one of the most consumed cereal worldwide. A sensitive HPLC-DAD methodology was applied to quantify alternariol (AOH), alternariol methyl ether (AME) and tenuazonic acid (TeA) in 65 samples of whole wheat, bran, and flour. The extraction methodology allowed extracting the three toxins simultaneously. Limits of detection in wheat were 3.4, 4.5, and 0.5 µg kg^-1 for AOH, AME and TeA, respectively. For bran, these data were 3.1, 4.5, and 12 µg kg^-1 and for flour 50, 70, and 14 µg kg^-1, respectively. The studied recoveries were higher than 70% and RSD was below 10%. Wheat and bran samples showed low AOH and AME contamination compared to TeA. The averages levels found for TeA in wheat, bran and flour were 19,190, 16,760, and 7360 µg kg^-1, respectively.