Determination of Mycotoxins in Bee Pollen by Gas Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Bee pollen, promoted as natural food supplement, is consumed increasingly by people to maintain a healthy diet. Depending on environmental conditions pollen can also be an optimum medium for growth of molds such as Fusarium, Penicillium. A quick, easy, cheap, rapid and safe (QuEChERS) extraction procedure followed by a gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) determination of eight selected Fusarium toxins in bee pollen was developed and optimized. Recovery studies at 20, 80 and 1000 µg/kg showed values between 73 and 95% with relative standard deviations (RSDs) lower than 15% for all studied mycotoxins. Limits of quantitation (LOQ) ranged from 1 to 4 µg/kg. The proposed method was applied to the analysis of 15 commercial samples. Two out of fifteen samples showed quantifiable values for neosolaniol and nivalenol.