Advances in Visual Immunoassays for Sensitive Detection of Mycotoxins in Food—A Review

Abstract

Mycotoxins are the toxic secondary metabolites naturally produced by fungi; their contamination in agricultural products and food severely threatens food safety and public health worldwide. The reliable, efficient, and sensitive quantification of mycotoxins in food has become increasingly challenging to tackle due to the complexity of food matrices and their low level. Visual detection has emerged as a popular trend toward miniaturization and simplification of mycotoxins assays yet is constrained with their limited sensitivity. This review mainly focuses on the various sensitive visual immunoassays for signal amplified detection of mycotoxins. These signal amplified immunoassays for the improved sensitivity of mycotoxins detection in food through nanomaterials for encapsulation enzyme, enzyme-mediated nanomaterials as the amplified signal readout, and nanozyme. Furthermore, the underlying principle and the advantages of visual immunoassays for mycotoxins have been proposed. And the challenges and perspectives have been proposed to develop improved efficient visual immunoassays for mycotoxins in food.