Pakistan Veterinary Journal (Apr 2013)
Distribution of Various Mycotoxins in Compound Feed, Total Mix Ration and Silage
Abstract
Present study was planned to assess the spectrum of natural occurrence of aflatoxins, zearalenone, ochratoxin A and A-B trichothecenes in dairy feed, silage and total mixed rations. One hundred and seventy one samples were analyzed by chromatographic technique. In cattle compound feed, there was a high incidence of aflatoxin B1 (97.3%) followed by aflatoxin B2 (50.3%), aflatoxin G1 (10.7%), aflatoxin G2 (1.5%), zearalenone (39.3%), ochratoxin A (37.5%) and deoxynivalenol (2.9%) with average values of 29, 8, 21, 10, 862, 64 and 813 ng/g respectively. Nine samples were found tainted with T-2 toxin (282ng/g), nivalenol (285ng/g) and fusarenon-x (1625ng/g) respectively. However, frequency distribution showed that positive seventy-seven (51.6%)samples found to be contaminated with aflatoxin B1 levels higher than permissible level of European Commission (<20ng/g). For zearalenone, forty-four (32.5%) samples were tainted with levels ranging from ≥500 to 3750ng/gi.e. higher than recommendations by European commission (<500ng/g). In contrast to compound feed, mycotoxin analysis in silage samples demonstrated the high prevalence of ochratoxin A (77.8 %) followed by AFB1 (25%) with mean of 53 and 8.71ng/g respectively. A scrutiny of mycotoxin for total mixed ration depicted that all samples were contaminated with aflatoxin B1 and ochratoxin A with an average of 30 and 48.5ng/g respectively. As far as multi-mycotoxin co-existence is concerned, compound feed was concurrently contaminated with two, three and four types of mycotoxins.
