Determination of patulin in apple juice by liquid chromatography

A method was developed and validated in-house for the determination of patulin (PAT), a toxic mold metabolite, in apple juice. The sample was extracted with ethyl acetate-hexane and analyzed by liquid chromatography equipped with a C18 column and diode array detector. The mobile phase used for the quantification was water-ethanol, at a flow rate of 0.5 mL/min. The method showed a mean recovery of 84.8%, the relative standard deviation obtained in the precision study was <7.7%, the quantification and detection limits were 7 and 3 microg/L, respectively, and the linear range for PAT in apple juice was 2.6-650 microg/L. The ruggedness was evaluated by an intralaboratory experiment, in which 5 factors were studied, and only one was found to influence the observed results. The developed method is fast, practical, and simple; the solvents (except hexane) and reagents used were nontoxic. The results of the validation confirmed the efficiency of the method, which is sensitive enough to be used in studies required to quantify PAT in apple juice.