This Page is part of the CU Toxic Plant Pages and was constructed by Yuan-Kuo Chen. Mycotoxins are toxic, secondary metabolites of low molecular weight produced by naturally occurring fungi.
Mycotoxins are neither infectious nor contagious, but can occur on a herd-wide basis.
Because of the diversity of chemical structures and physicochemical properties of mycotoxins, approaches for their analysis vary considerably. The analysis is further complicated by the typically uneven distribution of mycotoxuns in samples and by sample matrix interference. Skills Mycotoxin contamination of foods and feeds is usually heterogeneous. Therefore, precautions must be taken in sampling to obtain a reliable quantitative estimate of the concentration of a mycotoxin in a given lot. Part of the deleterious impact of mycotoxins on ruminants may be caused by the indirect effect of reduced nutrition from the infected grains or forages.