engleski

Effect of the wheat milling type on the distribution of Fusarium mycotoxins

There is an increasing trend of usage of traditional products which are perceived by the general public as a „healthy“ alternative to the industrial heavy processed foods. In order to verify those health claims that traditional flour producers are often using, this study compared three industrial and three traditional mills. In order to get comparable results, the wheat cleaning and conditioning (moisturizing of wheat prior the milling) was performed by industrial mills and fraction of the wheat was separated for milling in traditional mills (two watermills and one traditional electrical mill). In this way, loss of water soluble mycotoxins (e.g. nivalenol, deoxynivalenol) as an effect of pretreatment was prevented, or difference due to lack of wheat cleaning before milling on traditional mills. For every sample at least 10 kg sample was milled in traditional mills due to difficulties in the cleaning of those mills. After milling only flour products were analysed and compared with the results of the analysis on the whole wheat. On average there was a 64 % reduction of mycotoxin concentration from wheat to flour in industrial mills, while in traditional mills there was on average 15 % reduction. It is worth of mentioning that all regulated mycotoxins were below their respective regulatory limits. Also, some mycotoxins that were not found in the wheat sample, were detected in the flour of traditional mills probably due to carryover from previous samples, and difficulties in cleaning. Although there were somewhat higher concentrations of Fusarium mycotoxins in flour from traditional mills they also have more nutritionally valuable parts of the outer shell (fibers, vitamins, and microelements), that can improve human health. The health claims of traditional mills were not justified if mycotoxins are focal point. Overall, if the wheat does not have high mycotoxin concentrations, the flour produced by traditional mills should be safe for consumption, otherwise in this sense it is better to choose industrial mills.

Fusarium ; Wheat ; Milling ; Mycotoxins ; Flour

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