Determination of patulin in fruit juices using HPLC-DAD and GC-MSD techniques

A high performance liquid chromatography with a diode-array detector (HPLC-DAD) and a gas chromatography with a mass spectrometer (GC-MSD) are described for the determination of patulin (PAT) in apple juice. The limits of detection (DL) and quantification (QL) for the HPLC-DAD and GC-MSD method were found to be (DL = 0.23 μg kg−1 QL = 1.2 μg kg−1) and (DL = 5.8 μg kg−1 and QL = 13.8 μg kg−1), respectively. The recovery factors for HPLC-DAD and GC-MSD were found to be 99.5% (RSD% = 0.73) and 41% (RSD% = 10.03), respectively. The HPLC-DAD method was used to determine the occurrence of PAT in 90 samples of fruit juices.Results revealed the presence of PAT in 100% of the samples examined. The mean values of PAT in concentrated fruit juices and in the commercial fruit juices collected from the Greek market were found to be 10.54 μg PAT kg−1 and 5.57 μg PAT kg−1 juice, respectively. The most contaminated samples were four concentrated juices ranging from 18.10 μg PAT kg−1 to 36.8 μg PAT kg−1 juice. The daily exposure to patulin for the consumers of all ages in Greece, is ranging from 0.008 μg PAT kg−1 bw to 0.1 μg PAT kg−1 bw if the daily intake of fruit juices is from 0.1 to 0.5 kg. With the exception to the most contaminated sample, the daily exposure due to the samples examined, is below the provisional maximum tolerable daily intake for PAT (0.4 μg PAT kg−1 bw).