Summary 1

Summary 1

In this article  “Analysis of the Mycotoxin Patulin in Apple Juice Using the Flexar FX-15 UHLPC-UV”, P. Prabhu (2011) wrote a report about verifying patulin in apple juice.

Patulin is produced by mildews, which infects the moldy part of apples. By removing the damaged parts of the fruit may not remove all the patulin. Patulin can also be produced inside the fruit, even though this is not visible. When those infected apples are used to make apple juice, the patulin also affect the juice.  Because patulin cannot be destroyed by heat treatments. Patulin can affect a developing embryo because it is a human toxin and can change genetic cells. Therefore it is important to analyze the concentration of patulin in apple juice.

For this experiment a Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatograph (UHPLC) and a programmable wavelength UV/vis detector were used. The recovery of the method was tested with 3 different concentrations of the juice. From this was concluded that the technique is quantitative in its extraction.

This experiment presents a new method for the determination of patulin in apple juice. But HMF elutes very close to patulin, therefore it was essential to demonstrate the separation between those two chemicals, patulin and HMF. Ethyl acetate was used for the extraction and after that the samples were treated with sodium sulphate. This was very important because patulin can break down if ethyl acetate turn into condense. For the investigation the temperature was changed because with a lower temperature ethyl acetate does not evaporate. Another argument is that patulin is not stable at high temperatures.

In conclusion, the samples were collected at a local market and after that analyzed by the method described in the paper. The concentration of patulin was determined and in all the samples this level was less than 5 µg/L of juice. So this is below the recommended advisory level of the concentration patulin.