Detoxification of aflatoxin B1 in corn by chlorine dioxide gas

Chlorine dioxide (ClO2) gas was utilized for detoxifying aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) in corn for the first time. Four degradation compounds were identified by LC-MS as C17H13O8, C17H15O10, C16H15O10, and C15H11O8. Structurally, the biological activity of ClO2-treated AFB1 was removed due to the disappearance of C8-C9 double bond in the furan ring and the modification of cyclopentanone and methoxy after ClO2 treatment. The cell viability assay on human embryo hepatocytes confirmed little toxicity of the degradation products. The degradation efficiency of AFB1 on corn peaked near 90.0% under the optimized conditions and reached 79.6% for low initial contamination of AFB1 at 5-20 μg/kg. Accordingly, ClO2 has the potential to be developed into an effective, efficient, and economic approach to detoxify AFB1 in grains.