Abstract
Patulin is a water-soluble mycotoxin produced by several species of fungi. Governmental bodies have placed it under scrutiny for its potential negative health effects, and maximum residue limits are fixed in specific food matrices to protect consumers’ health. Confirmatory analysis of patulin in complex food matrices can be a difficult task, and sample clean-up treatments are frequently necessary before instrumental analyses. With the aim of simplifying the clean-up step, we prepared a 256-member combinatorial polymeric library based on 16 functional monomers, four cross-linkers and four different porogenic solvents. The library was screened for the binding towards patulin in different media (acetonitrile and citrate buffer at pH 3.2), with the goal of identifying polymer formulations with good binding properties towards the target compound. As a proof of concept, a methacrylic acid-co-pentaerithrytole tetraacrylate polymer prepared in chloroform was successfully used as a solid-phase extraction material for the clean-up and extraction of patulin from apple juice. Clean chromatographic patterns and acceptable recoveries were obtained for juice spiked with patulin at concentration levels of 25 (64 ± 12%), 50 (83 ± 5.6%) and 100 μg L−1 (76 ± 4.5%). The within-day and between-day reproducibility evaluated at a concentration level of 25 μg L−1 were 5.6 and 7.6%, respectively.
Highlights
Patulin (4-hydroxy-4H-furo[3,2-c]pyran-2[6H]-one) is a water-soluble ylidenebutenolide mycotoxin produced by several Aspergillus and Penicillium species of fungi whose presence is considered common in fruit- and vegetable-based products, especially apples and apple-based food and beverages
Patulin was first identified as a compound with antibiotic properties, and was considered interesting for pharmaceutical applications [1,2], it has been placed under surveillance for its potential negative health effects
The European Union regulation has set an maximum residue limits (MRLs) of 50 μg kg−1 in apple juice and as a juice ingredient in different beverages, 25 μg kg−1 in solid apple products and 10 μg kg−1 in apple products intended for infants and young children [6]
Summary
Patulin (4-hydroxy-4H-furo[3,2-c]pyran-2[6H]-one) is a water-soluble ylidenebutenolide mycotoxin produced by several Aspergillus and Penicillium species of fungi whose presence is considered common in fruit- and vegetable-based products, especially apples and apple-based food and beverages. The use of preliminary clean-up protocols can be considered a rather common requirement in analytical methods developed for the determination of different contaminants in food matrices. Several papers have recently described synthetic polymers prepared by polymerization without the use of the template molecule, but capable of good selectivity and binding properties towards deoxynivalenol, aflatoxin B1, and ochratoxin A [17,18,19,20]. These studies are based on the virtual screening of an in silico library of functional monomers and cross-linkers for the binding to a target molecule. The library was screened for the binding to patulin in different experimental conditions and the organic polymer that showed the best binding properties was selected as a solid-phase extraction material for the extraction of patulin from apple juice
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