Occurrence of deoxynivalenol (vomitoxin) in beer in Turkey detected by HPLC

The objective of this study was to investigate the deoxynivalenol (DON) contamination/level in beer consumed Turkey using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with UV–visible detector at 220 nm. An acetonitrile–water (21 + 4, v/v) extract of samples first was cleaned up on a column packed with alumina–celite–charcoal (0.50 g + 0.25 g + 0.60 g) and the cartridge was washed with acetonitrile–water (21 + 4, v/v) for column condition and C18 solid-phase extraction column was used for second clean up. The minimum detectable amount for the DON was 125 μg/l (2.5 ng injected). A total of 50 commercially available beer samples, collected from markets. None of the samples contained any detectable amount of DON. The recoveries for beer with the known amounts of DON (1 ppm) were 83.2% (SD 5.44, n = 5). This is a pioneering study performed in beer samples consumed in Turkey for the presence of DON.