Distribution of Various Mycotoxins in Compound Feed, Total Mix Ration and Silage

Present study was planned to assess the spectrum of natural occurrence of aflatoxins, zearalenone, ochratoxin A and A-B trichothecenes in dairy feed, silage and total mixed rations. One hundred and seventy one samples were analyzed by chromatographic technique. In cattle compound feed, there was a high incidence of aflatoxin B1 (97.3%) followed by aflatoxin B2 (50.3%), aflatoxin G1 (10.7%), aflatoxin G2 (1.5%), zearalenone (39.3%), ochratoxin A (37.5%) and deoxynivalenol (2.9%) with average values of 29, 8, 21, 10, 862, 64 and 813 ng/g respectively. Nine samples were found tainted with T-2 toxin (282ng/g), nivalenol (285ng/g) and fusarenon-x (1625ng/g) respectively. However, frequency distribution showed that positive seventy-seven (51.6%)samples found to be contaminated with aflatoxin B1 levels higher than permissible level of European Commission (<20ng/g). For zearalenone, forty-four (32.5%) samples were tainted with levels ranging from ≥500 to 3750ng/gi.e. higher than recommendations by European commission (<500ng/g). In contrast to compound feed, mycotoxin analysis in silage samples demonstrated the high prevalence of ochratoxin A (77.8 %) followed by AFB1 (25%) with mean of 53 and 8.71ng/g respectively. A scrutiny of mycotoxin for total mixed ration depicted that all samples were contaminated with aflatoxin B1 and ochratoxin A with an average of 30 and 48.5ng/g respectively. As far as multi-mycotoxin co-existence is concerned, compound feed was concurrently contaminated with two, three and four types of mycotoxins.