Survey of patulin contamination in fruit juice in Thailand

Abstract

Various kinds of fruit juice such as apple, orange, guava, passion fruit have been collected from supermarkets and drinking trolleys in Bangkok and suburb since 2003 for determinating of patulin contamination. Patulin was extracted from fruit juice with ethyl acetate by liquid-liquid partition extraction, cleaned up with silica gel column and determined by HPLC-UV detector. It was found that 14 samples out of 103 samples (14%) were contaminated with patulin in the range 4.55-35.97μg/L. The result showed that there was not serious contamination of patulin in fruit juice especially apple juice since the maximum regulation level of patulin in apple juice is set at 50μg/L (Regulation (EC) No 1425/2003).