Automated analysis of ochratoxin A in cereals and oil by immunoaffinity magnetic beads coupled to UPLC-FLD

Abstract

A rapid and accurate method based on automated immunoaffinity magnetic beads (IMB) clean-up and ultra-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (UPLC-FLD) was developed for the determination of ochratoxin A (OTA) in cereals and oils. The main parameters affecting the method were studied in detail. Under optimized conditions, the recoveries of spiked analytes at four different concentrations were ranged from 86.3 to 95.4% and the inter-day relative standard deviations were below 7.9%. Coupling with UPLC-FLD allowed the limits of detection and quantification to be 0.24 and 0.80 μg/kg, respectively. The results demonstrate that the proposed method is reliable to determine OTA in cereals and oils. This novel protocol utilizes a simple and automatic sample pretreatment procedure for high-throughput and rapid clean-up of OTA in complex samples. Moreover, this method improves the performance of OTA analysis in cereals and oils. By consuming less time, cost and labor, as well as fewer errors from operation, the developed protocol overcomes the drawbacks of traditional column-based clean-up methods and thus offers a great prospect for OTA analysis mainly in the applications of food safety and public health protection.