The Detoxification of Aflatoxin B1

**177**

**Chapter 10**

*Qian Yang*

**Abstract**

herein.

biological degradation

**1. Introduction**

and toxic.

Decontamination of Aflatoxin B1

Aflatoxins are a class of highly toxic carcinogenic mycotoxins by food contaminant *Aspergillus* fungi: *Aspergillus flavus* and *Aspergillus parasiticus*. Aflatoxins are classified into four compounds: aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), aflatoxin B2 (AFB2), aflatoxin G1 (AFG1), and aflatoxin G2 (AFG2), while AFB1 is the most potent carcinogenic agent associated with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). *Aspergillus* fungi is ubiquitously found in the soil and contaminates the crops such as maize, groundnuts, rice, and so on. Prevention of aflatoxin contamination, detection and degradation of *Aspergillus* fungi contamination, and the concentration of AFB1 in the foodstuffs are of the primary task to prevent health problems from aflatoxin. Here, the different ways are summarized to degrade or decontaminate the aflatoxins available with the foods. Traditional decontamination of aflatoxin includes physical (heat and irradiation), biological, and chemical treatments. However, these traditional aflatoxin decontamination technologies are not enough to remove the aflatoxin from the foods. Recently, some novel processing approached have been explored to achieve full degradation of the aflatoxin available with the foodstuffs, like microwave heating, gamma and electron beam irradiation, pulsed light, electrolyzed water, cold plasma, and so on. Decontamination mechanism, degradation efficiency, advantages, and limitations of these new technologies shall be discussed

**Keywords:** aflatoxin B1, detoxification, toxicity, decontamination,

Mycotoxins are low-molecular-weight nature products as secondary metabolites by filamentous fungi or mold, which display overlapping toxicities to invertebrates, plants, and microorganism. The term mycotoxin was coined in 1962 in the aftermath of unusual veterinary crisis close to London, England, where nearly 100,000 turkey poultry died. It came out that was linked to peanut meal contaminated by aflatoxins. Now, more than 300 mycotoxins are found; however, only very few mycotoxins caught scientists' eyeball, which have been proven to be carcinogenic

Human food can be contaminated with mycotoxins during storage. One of the principal classes of highly toxic carcinogenic mycotoxins is the metabolite of *Aspergillus flavus* and *Aspergillus parasiticus* aflatoxins [1]. Aflatoxins are classified into such four compounds as aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), aflatoxin B2 (AFB2), aflatoxin G1 (AFG1), and aflatoxin G2 (AFG2) based on their fluorescence under UV light (blue or green), and in the milk it was aflatoxin M1 (AFM1) and aflatoxin M2 (AFM2) which are the metabolites of AFB1 and AFB2, respectively [2–4]. The toxic effect
