Ochratoxin A detection by spectrofluorimetry compared with high performance liquid c hromatography in coffee

Abstract

The Brazilian coffee production plays important role both in the national and oversea trade. The quality and sanity of coffee depend on fungal contamination, with emphasis on ochratoxin A (OTA) producing species, which is a nephrotoxin with hazardous effect in public health. The exigency on continuous monitoring and control of OTA in agricultural commodity requires a simple, rapid and accessible analytical methodology. The objective of this research was to set up the spectrofluorimetric method for OTA detection intended for monitoring in coffee, which was developed in data-correlation with high efficiency liquid chromatography (HPLC). The performance of spectrofluorimetric analysis was evaluated using artificially contaminated coffee (10, 20 and 50 ng/g), and the data compared with HPLC. Although of the fault of former technique, with recovery of 40.14 % and correlation coefficient of 0.79 when compared to HPLC, i.e. low reliability and inadequate efficiency, the data showed perspective to follow the improvement inserting new tool, and further standardization and certification.