High-performance liquid chromatography and Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay techniques for detection and...

Comparison was done between high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and a competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for detection and quantification of aflatoxin B₁ (AFB₁) in feed samples. The two procedures were standardized and validated before the actual experiment. Five concentrations (0, 5, 10, 20 and 30 ppb) of feed samples were used for both methods. For the HPLC technique, the samples were extracted in acetonitrile/water (90/10) solution, cleaned-up using solid phase extraction (SPE) column, and derivatized by water/trifluoroacetic acid/glacial acetic acid (35/10/5) solution before instrument analysis. The samples were extracted in 70% methanol for the ELISA technique.

The two tests showed very strong linearity with correlation coefficient value of > 0.99 using standard solutions. The mean recovery rate was 92.42% (with relative standard deviation (RSD) of 5.97) and 75.64% (RSD = 34.88) for HPLC and ELISA, respectively. There was no statistically significant difference in recovery rate between the two methods. There was a positive correlation (r = 0.84) between them which indicated that the two techniques can be used to detect and quantify aflatoxin B₁ in feed samples. However, there were variations among replicates for the ELISA method, which shows that this method is more applicable for screening purposes.