Determination of Deoxynivalenol in Poultry Feed by Three Gas Chromatographic Detection Techniques

Three different gas chromatographic detection techniques were applied for the determination of deoxynivalenol (DON) present in poultry feed samples. Extraction and cleanup procedures were kept the same for GC–FID, GC–ECD and GC–MS methods. Although all three GC methods provided good and comparable results, but more attention was focused on GC–FID due to its lower cost and easy availability in many laboratories. Therefore, a short 15 m DB-1 short column was introduced for the determination of DON in poultry feed to reduce the time of analysis and initial cost of column. An inter-laboratory study for GC–FID was performed in two laboratories using four naturally DONS-contaminated feed samples and one spiked with standard. The relative standard deviations for repeatability (RSDr) and relative standard deviations for reproducibility (RSD_R) of naturally contaminated feed were in the range 5–23 and 11–24 %, respectively. The Horwitz Ratio (HORRAT) was less than 1.0 in each sample. From the spiking test, recovery, RSDr, RSD_R and value of HORRAT were 93, 5, 11 and 0.6 %, respectively. For GC–FID method, limit of quantification was found to be 6 μg kg^?1. Thus, GC–FID method using 15 m DB-1 capillary column is sensitive and validated analytical method for the determination of DON for poultry feed.