High Pressure Processing Impact on Alternariol and Aflatoxins of Grape Juice and Fruit Juice-Milk Based Beverages

Abstract

High-pressure processing (HPP) has emerged over the last 2 decades as a good alternative to traditional thermal treatment for food safety and shelf-life extension, supplying foods with similar characteristics to those of fresh products. Currently, HPP has also been proposed as a useful tool to reduce food contaminants, such as pesticides and mycotoxins. The aim of the present study is to explore the effect of HPP technology at 600 MPa during 5 min at room temperature on alternariol (AOH) and aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) mycotoxins reduction in different juice models. The effect of HPP has also been compared with a thermal treatment performed at 90 °C during 21 s. For this, different juice models, orange juice/milk beverage, strawberry juice/milk beverage and grape juice, were prepared and spiked individually with AOH and AFB1 at a concentration of 100 µg/L. After HPP and thermal treatments, mycotoxins were extracted from treated samples and controls by dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME) and determined by HPLC-MS/MS-IT. The results obtained revealed reduction percentages up to 24% for AFB1 and 37% for AOH. Comparing between different juice models, significant differences were observed for AFB1 residues in orange juice/milk versus strawberry juice/milk beverages after HPP treatment. Moreover, HPP resulted as more effective than thermal treatment, being an effective tool to incorporate to food industry in order to reach mycotoxins reductions.

Keywords

• aflatoxin B1
• alternariol
• high-pressure processing
• juice models
• dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction
• liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry