Adsorption of ochratoxin A from grape juice by yeast cells immobilised in calcium alginate beads

• Grape juice can be contaminated by ochratoxin A (OTA).
• Candida intermedia yeast cells adsorb OTA from grape juice.
• OTA-adsorption efficacy is not affected by encapsulation of yeast cells in calcium alginate beads.
• Magnetic calcium alginate beads allow fast removal from the aqueous solution with a magnet.
• A prototype bioreactor packed with encapsulated autoclaved yeast cells is proposed as a tool to remove traces of mycotoxin from liquid matrices.

Grape juice can be easily contaminated with ochratoxin A (OTA), one of the known mycotoxins with the greatest public health significance. Among the different approaches to decontaminate juice from this mycotoxin, microbiological methods proved efficient, inexpensive and safe, particularly the use of yeast or yeast products. To ascertain whether immobilisation of the yeast biomass would lead to successful decontamination, alginate beads encapsulating Candida intermedia yeast cells were used in our experiments to evaluate their OTA-biosorption efficacy. Magnetic calcium alginate beads were also prepared by adding magnetite in the formulation to allow fast removal from the aqueous solution with a magnet. Calcium alginate beads were added to commercial grape juice spiked with 20 μg/kg OTA and after 48 h of incubation a significant reduction (> 80%), of the total OTA content was achieved, while in the subsequent phases (72–120 h) OTA was slowly released into the grape juice by alginate beads. Biosorption properties of alginate-yeast beads were tested in a prototype bioreactor consisting in a glass chromatography column packed with beads, where juice amended with OTA was slowly flowed downstream. The adoption of an interconnected scaled-up bioreactor as an efficient and safe tool to remove traces of OTA from liquid matrices is discussed.