Enzyme-assisted extraction for the HPLC determination of ochratoxin A in pork and dry-cured ham

Amedeo Pietri (1) , Alessia Gualla (1) , Silvia Rastelli (1) , Terenzio Bertuzzi (1)

1 Feed & Food Science and Nutrition Institute

The extraction of ochratoxin A from meat products is generally carried out using chlorinated organic solvents, such as chloroform or methyl chloride, acidified with hydrochloric or o-phosphoric acid. In this study, an innovative method was developed to extract ochratoxin A from pork and dry-cured ham samples. The method is based on an enzyme-assisted extraction with pancreatin in a pH 7.5 phosphate buffer. How pancreatin hydrolyses proteins, so that ochratoxin A, kept in the ionized form, is easily extracted by the aqueous solution. After purification through an immunoaffinity column, ochratoxin A is determined by HPLC with fluorimetric detection. The average recovery values were higher than 90.0 % and the relative standard deviations were below 5.5 %. The limits of detection and of quantification were 0.060 and 0.120 µg kg-1, respectively. A comparison between the new enzyme-assisted extraction and an established chloroform method was carried out on 6 pork and 40 dry-cured ham naturally contaminated samples; significantly higher (P<0.001) values of ochratoxin A were obtained on dry-cured ham samples by the enzyme-assisted method.

Mots clés: Life Sciences

Amedeo Pietri, Alessia Gualla, Silvia Rastelli, Terenzio Bertuzzi. Enzyme-assisted extraction for the HPLC determination of ochratoxin A in pork and dry-cured ham. Food Additives and Contaminants, 2011, pp.1. ⟨10.1080/19440049.2011.609490⟩. ⟨hal-00743442⟩