Investigation of ochratoxin A in Syrian consumed baby foods

• Published in: Food control 2016-04, Vol.62, p.97-103
• Main Authors: Darouj, Eman, Massouh, Laila, Ghanem, Iyad
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Baby foods; HPLC-FLD; Immunoaffinity columns; Ochratoxin A
• ISSN: 0956-7135; 1873-7129
• DOI: 10.1016/j.foodcont.2015.10.018

An investigation on the occurrence of ochratoxin A (OTA) in baby food products consumed in Syria was conducted. A total of 42 samples of baby food formulae, including 30 cereal-based baby food and 12 fruit-based baby food formulae were analyzed using immunoaffinity columns (IAC) for sample clean-up and high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (HPLC-FD). According to the results in the present study, the mean recoveries of OTA from spiked cereal-based baby food and fruit-based baby food samples were in the range of 92.85–107.4% and 83.3–87.86%, respectively. While the limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) for OTA were 0.038 and 0.11 µg/kg for cereal-based baby foods and 0.05 and 0.17 µg/kg for fruit-based baby foods, respectively. Analytical results showed that 40.48% of the analyzed samples were found contaminated with OTA. Among the OTA contaminated samples, 43.33% samples of cereal-based baby food, and 33.33% samples of fruit-based baby food contained mean values of 0.094 and 0.093 µg/kg of OTA, respectively. Our findings show that contamination levels of OTA in all samples were lower than the permitted level set by European Commission Regulation. •Recoveries of OTA from cereal-based baby food spiked samples ranged between 92.85 and 107.4%.•Recoveries of OTA from fruit-based baby food spiked samples ranged between 83.3 and 87.86%.•43.33% of cereal-based baby foodsamples, and 33.33% of fruit-based baby food samples were found contaminated with OTA.•Levels of recovery were found to be lower than the permitted level set by European Commission Regulation.