[Rapid determination of agaritin in commercial mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) with high performance liquid...

A procedure is described for the determination of agaritine in the commercial mushroom Agaricus bisporus by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Agaritine was extracted from the mushroom sample with methanol and the filtered extract diluted with phosphate buffer. An aliquot of this solution was used directly for the HPLC-separation on a cation exchange column (Partisil SCX) with 0.5 mM phosphate buffer (pH 1.8) as mobile phase and u.v. monitoring at 237 nm. The agaritine content in fresh mushrooms was found to be in the range of 94-629 mg/kg fresh weight. Canned mushrooms contained 1-55 mg/kg drained weight with 3-103 mg/l in the liquid. The highest agaritine values were found in dried commercial mushrooms amounting to 2,110-6,905 mg/kg.