Determination of ochratoxin a in spices from Dharwad by high performance liquid chromatography

Spices are important agriculture commodities because of their strong flavour, aroma and taste they are widely used to flavour the food preparations. Fungal contamination is one of the common problem in spice trade, due to poor agriculture and storage practices spices get contaminated from field to fork level, if they get conducive atmosphere for their growth they grow and produce toxic secondary metabolites called mycotoxins, mycotoxins are having toxic effects on Humans and animals. The most common mycotoxins are Aflatoxins, Ochratoxins, Fumonisins, Trichothecenes, Zearalenones and Ergot alkaloids etc. Among the mycotoxins Ochratoxins are most common toxins produced by mainly two genera of fungi, Aspergillus and Penicillium. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified Ochratoxin-A as possible Human carcinogen (Group 2B), were Ocharatoxin –A is common contaminant of various food stuffs including spices. The present study aims to investigate the concentration of Ochratoxin–A in selected spices from Dharwad. A total of 20 samples belonging to 5 spices were analysed for Ochratoxin-A content by HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography) with fluorescent detector, after immunoaffinity column clean up, average percentage of recovery value (mean) is 87% , Limit of Quantification (LOQ) is 5.0 μg/Kg among the 20 samples 19 samples shows Ochratoxin- A content <5.0 μg/Kg but one black pepper sample shows Ochratoxin–A content 5.9 μg/Kg. Ochratoxin–A content of all the 20 analysed samples ranging from < 5.0 μg/Kg to 5.9 μg/Kg., so all the 20 analysed samples from Dharwad shows the Ochratoxin-A content within the EU consumption limit.

Author(s): Ch. Ramesh and Santoshkumar Jayagoudar

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