Author
|
Submitted to: Association Official Analytical Chemists Annual Intrl Meeting & Exposition
Publication Type: Abstract Only Publication Acceptance Date: 9/11/1997 Publication Date: N/A Citation: N/A Interpretive Summary: Technical Abstract: The carcinogenic mycotoxin aflatoxin B1 has long been the object of intense study due to the impact of this toxin upon agricultural productivity. The result has been the development of a number of rapid and sensitive analytical methods for the aflatoxins in foods. We report the development of a capillary electrophoresis (CE) method for the quantitation of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) in corn. The instrumentation can be assembled easily from readily available components and takes advantage of the native fluorescence of AFB1 by using a helium/cadmium laser to provide the excitation light. The method incorporates some of the same extraction and clean-up procedures as the commonly used TLC and HPLC methods. After extraction and clean-up, each sample was analyzed within 15 minutes, 10 minutes of which was used for the electrophoresis and 5 minutes of which was used for rinsing the capillary before and after the analysis. The CE method was compared to an established HPLC-fluorescenc on naturally contaminated corn samples. The CE technique had a limit of detection (signal to noise ratio of 4) of 0.5 ppb AFB1 in corn, with a useful range for quantitation of between 1.0 to 100 ppb. Recovery of AFB1 from artificially contaminated corn samples averaged 85% over the range of 1 to 50 ppb (89% by HPLC). Forty naturally contaminated corn samples examined by both methods showed good agreement (r2=0.969). The reported CE method is suitable for the routine analysis of corn samples as an alternative to HPLC. |
