Investigation of ochratoxin A in Syrian consumed baby foods

An investigation on the occurrence of ochratoxin A (OTA) in baby food products consumed in Syria was conducted. A total of 42 samples of baby food formulae, including 30 cereal-based baby food and 12 fruit-based baby food formulae were analyzed using immunoaffinity columns (IAC) for sample clean-up and high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (HPLC-FD). According to the results in the present study, the mean recoveries of OTA from spiked cereal-based baby food and fruit-based baby food samples were in the range of 92.85-107.4% and 83.3-87.86%, respectively. While the limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) for OTA were 0.038 and 0.11 µg/kg for cereal-based baby foods and 0.05 and 0.17 µg/kg for fruit-based baby foods, respectively. Analytical results showed that 40.48% of the analyzed samples were found contaminated with OTA. Among the OTA contaminated samples, 43.33% samples of cereal-based baby food, and 33.33% samples of fruit-based baby food contained mean values of 0.094 and 0.093 µg/kg of OTA, respectively. Our findings show that contamination levels of OTA in all samples were lower than the permitted level set by European Commission Regulation.