Chapter 2 Techniques of Thin Layer Chromatography

Abstract

This chapter discusses the clean-up and quantification procedures associated with thin layer chromatography. The analysis of mycotoxins involves a sequence of discrete operations that includes sampling, sample preparation extraction, clean-up, quantification and confirmation procedures. Mycotoxins occur in a wide variety of commodities and products; the analyst is faced with the problem of removing a large number of disparate, interfering compounds from the sample extracts. A variety of clean-up methods have been employed in the chapter. The clean-up methods are laborious, time-consuming and of limited efficiency. Because of these disadvantages, clean-up procedures using commercially available solid phase extraction (SPE) cartridges are increasingly utilized for the analysis of mycotoxins. SPE techniques involve the partitioning of analytes and interfering compounds between a mobile and stationary phase. SPE clean-up has been applied to the analysis of aflatoxin in groundnut and corn by utilizing silica gel as the solid adsorbent. The simplicity of the SPE clean-up makes it ideally suited to the analysis of large numbers of samples.