Mycotoxins are a large types of secondary metabolites appeared by fungi, they pose a great hazard and toxic reactions to human and animals. A majority of countries and regulators, such as European Union, have established series of requirements and set the maximum tolerated levels. The development of high sensitive and specific analytical platform for mycotoxins is much in demand to address new challenges for food safety in worldwide. Due to the superiority of simple, rapid, and low-cost characteristics, aptamer-based biosensors are successfully developed for the detection of various mycotoxins with high sensitivity and selectivity compared with traditional instrumental methods and immunological approaches. In this article, we discuss and analyze the development of aptasensors for mycotoxins determination in food and agricultural products during the last eleven years and cover the literatures from the first report in 2008 until today. In addition, challenges and future trends for the selection of aptamers towards various mycotoxins and aptasensors for multi-mycotoxins analysis are summarized. Given the promising development and potential application of aptasensors, the future researches will witness the great practicability of aptamer-based biosensor for food safety field.

The aim of the present study was to determine the effects of farming environments on microbiota in raw milk and to assess the relationship among microbes by 16S rRNA sequencing methods. Samples of raw milk, cow trough water, teat dip cup, teat, teat liner, dairy hall air, cowshed air, feces, feed, and bedding from two farms were collected. The two highest abundant bacterial groups of Moraxellaceae and Staphylococcaceae were found in milk and teat liner samples, respectively, at Zhengzhou farm, Henan Province. Moreover, the two highest abundant bacterial groups of Enterobacteriaceae and Moraxellaceae were found in milk and teat dip cup samples, respectively, at Qiqihar farm, Heilongjiang Province. Source Tracker analysis revealed that the teat liner and teat dip cup were the most important contributors of microbes in milk samples at Zhengzhou farm and Qiqihar farm, respectively, which could be attributed to the management level of the farm. Therefore, disinfection and cleaning procedures should be developed to improve the quality of raw milk.

In this paper, a rapid and sensitive fluorescent aptasensor for the detection of aflatoxin M₁ (AFM₁) in milk powder was developed. Graphene oxide (GO) was employed to quench the fluorescence of a carboxyfluorescein-labelled aptamer and protect the aptamer from nuclease cleavage. Upon the addition of AFM₁, the formation of an AFM₁/aptamer complex resulted in the aptamer detaching from the surface of GO, followed by the aptamer cleavage by DNase I and the release of the target AFM₁ for a new cycle, which led to great signal amplification and high sensitivity. Under optimized conditions, the GO-based detection of the aptasensor exhibited a linear response to AFM₁ levels in a dynamic range from 0.2 to 10 μg/kg, with a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.05 μg/kg. Moreover, the developed aptasensor showed a high specificity towards AFM₁ without interference from other mycotoxins. In addition, the technique was successfully applied for the detection of AFM₁ in infant milk powder samples. The aptasensor proposed here offers a promising technology for food safety monitoring and can be extended to various targets.