High pressure liquid chromatographic determination of patulin in apple juice

Patulin was extracted from apple juice with ethyl acetate and the extract was purified by elution from a silica gel column with ethyl acetate-toluene. The eluate was concentrated, and patulin was determined by reverse phase high pressure liquid chromatography using a 25 cm Partisil-10 ODS column. The lower detection limit was 1 microgram/L and the mean recovery of patulin added to apple juice was 82.6 +/- 2.8 %. The patulin content ranged from less than 1 to 220 microgram/L for the 140 samples analyzed.