Fingerprinting and tagging detection of mycotoxins in agri-food products by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy: Principles and recent applications

Abstract

Mycotoxin contamination in agri-food products compromises human and animal health throughout the supply chains, thus the establishment of rapid and accurate methods for the detection of mycotoxins is essential for food safety assurance. Among the preferred spectral methods, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has emerged as an attractive solution for detecting trace mycotoxins in complex food matrices due to its advantages of high sensitivity, rapidness and non-destructiveness. However, relevant developments in research in this field are scarcely reviewed. In the current review, the fundamentals of SERS and substrates for detecting mycotoxin in agri-foods are introduced, technical developments in the detection procedure including combined techniques, fingerprinting and SERS tagging an