Simultaneous Quantitative Assessment of Ochratoxin A, Patulin, 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural, and Bisphenol A in Fruit Drinks Using HPLC with Diode Array-Fluorimetric Detection

The analysis of regulated contaminants in fruit drinks often requires suitable validated and rapid analytical methods for cost-effective food control, and is of considerable interest among the fruit beverage industry. This study demonstrated a rapid and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography approach for the simultaneous determination of ochratoxin A (OTA), patulin (PAT), 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), and bisphenol A (BPA) in various fruit drinks. The separations were achieved using a C18 core-shell column with both photo-diode array and fluorimetric detections connected in series. A gradient system consisting of methanol and 0.1 formic acid at a flow rate of 1.2 mL min�1, thermostated at 35� C, provided fast elution with run time <9 min. Sample pretreatment was optimised to enable extraction of all analytes from fruit drink matrices. The optimised method was validated. Correlation coefficients of R > 0.99 were achieved with detection limits of 0.5 ng mL�1 (OTA), 1.1 ng mL�1 (PAT), 7.9 ng mL�1 (HMF), and 1.0 ng mL�1 (BPA). Recoveries ranged from 82 to 99. Good relative standard deviations for intraday retention times (�3.54) and peak area (�3.5) were achieved. The developed multi-contaminants analysis method was successfully applied to determine OTA, PAT, HMF, and BPA in various fruit drinks. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.