Assessment of Citrinin in Spices and Infant Cereals Using Immunoaffinity Column Clean-Up with HPLC-Fluorescence...

Area of Science:

• Food Science
• Analytical Chemistry
• Mycotoxicology

Background:

• Citrinin analysis traditionally focused on cereals like red yeast rice.
• Recent years show increased assessment of complex matrices such as spices and infant foods for citrinin.
• Existing analytical methods require adaptation for these novel food commodities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate immunoaffinity column clean-up methods for citrinin analysis.
• To enable accurate High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) with fluorescence detection in spices and infant foods.
• To establish reliable quantification limits and assess method efficacy in diverse food matrices.

Main Methods:

• Development of citrinin immunoaffinity column clean-up procedures.
• Validation of methods using spiked representative food matrices (spices, infant cereals).
• Analysis via HPLC with fluorescence detection, benchmarked against European Union (EU) regulations for Ochratoxin A (OTA).

Main Results:

• Methods demonstrated high recoveries (>80%) and low relative standard deviations (<9%) during validation.
• Established limits of detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ) at 1 µg/kg and 3 µg/kg for spices, and 0.1 µg/kg and 0.25 µg/kg for infant cereals.
• Effective clean-up achieved across various spices and infant foods with recoveries >75% and % RSD <5%.

Conclusions:

• The developed immunoaffinity column clean-up methods are suitable for reliable citrinin quantification in spices and infant cereals.
• Unexpectedly high citrinin levels in nutmeg and infant multigrain porridge indicate a potential public health concern.
• Close monitoring of citrinin contamination in these commodities is necessary, with potential future regulation.