Detoxification of aflatoxin B in corn by chlorine dioxide gas.

Chlorine dioxide (ClO) gas was utilized for detoxifying aflatoxin B (AFB) in corn for the first time. Four degradation compounds were identified by LC-MS as CHO, CHO, CHO, and CHO. Structurally, the biological activity of ClO-treated AFB was removed due to the disappearance of C8-C9 double bond in the furan ring and the modification of cyclopentanone and methoxy after ClO treatment. The cell viability assay on human embryo hepatocytes confirmed little toxicity of the degradation products. The degradation efficiency of AFB on corn peaked near 90.0% under the optimized conditions and reached 79.6% for low initial contamination of AFB at 5-20 μg/kg. Accordingly, ClO has the potential to be developed into an effective, efficient, and economic approach to detoxify AFB in grains.