A Portable Automated Microfluidic Platform for Point-of-Care Testing for Multiple Mycotoxins in Wine

Abstract

Food safety requires point-of-care testing (POCT) for mycotoxins, since their presence in wine significantly impacts the wine industry and poses a severe threat to human life. Traditional detection methods are usually limited to detecting one mycotoxin and cannot achieve high-throughput, automated, and rapid quantitative analysis of multiple mycotoxins in real samples. Here, we propose a portable automated microfluidic platform (PAMP) integrating a chemiluminescence (CL) imaging system and a microfluidic chip to realize POCT for multiple mycotoxins in real samples, simplifying complex manual operations, shortening the detection time, and improving the detection sensitivity. Specially, silicone films were used as substrates on microfluidic chips to incubate mycotoxin conjugations, and the streptavidin–biotin (SA-B) system and an indirect immunoassay were implemented on silicone films to improve the sensitivity of reaction results. Interestingly, these methods significantly improved detection results, resulting in sensitive detection of mycotoxins, including zearalenone (ZEA) ranging from 1 to 32 ng/mL, aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) ranging from 0.2 to 6.4 ng/mL, and ochratoxin A (OTA) ranging from 2 to 64 ng/mL. The recovery of samples reached 91.39–109.14%, which verified the reliability and practicability of the PAMP. This PAMP enables sensitive and rapid detection of multiple mycotoxins in markets or wineries that lack advanced laboratory facilities. Therefore, it is essential to develop a portable microfluidic platform for POCT to detect mycotoxins in real samples.