The silymarin complex extracted from milk thistle provides significant health benefits, particularly due to its antioxidant and hepatoprotective properties. However, plant substances can be contaminated by a number of fungi types and their secondary metabolites-mycotoxins. This work deals with the determination of aflatoxins and zearalenone and its metabolites in 39 different samples grown in 2020 and 2021. Analysis of mycotoxins was performed by UHPLC-MS/MS after immunoaffinity column AFLAPREP® and EASI-EXTRACT® ZEARALENONE clean-up. The presence of aflatoxins was not confirmed in the monitored samples, but 1/3 of the samples were contaminated with zearalenone in the range of 2.8-378.9 µg/kg. Metabolites of zearalenone such as α-zearalenol, α-zearalanol, and β-zearalanol were not detected in any of the samples. β-Zearalenol was found in two samples (2.6 µg/kg and 29.8 µg/kg).

Department of Biotechnology University of Chemistry and Technology Prague Technická 5 160 00 Prague 6 Prague Czech Republic

Faculty of AgriSciences Department of Crop Science Breeding and Plant Medicine Mendel University in Brno Zemědělská 1 613 00 Brno Czech Republic

Institute of Food Science and Biotechnology Faculty of Chemistry Brno University of Technology Purkyňova 464 118 612 00 Brno Czech Republic

Research Institute of Brewing and Malting Mostecká 7 614 00 Brno Czech Republic

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