Dispersive Liquid-Liquid Microextraction Followed by HPLC-DAD as an Efficient and Sensitive Technique for the Determination of Patulin from Apple Juice and Concentrate Samples

A simple and sensitive method based on dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) in conjunction with high performance liquid chromatography-diode array detection (HPLC-DAD) has been developed for the quantitative analysis of patulin in apple juice and concentrate samples. The effect of extraction and disperser solvent (nature and volume), pH of sample solution, extraction time and extraction temperature was investigated. Under the optimal conditions the linear dynamic range of patulin was from 8.0 to 40.0 mu g L-1 with a correlation coefficient of 0.9993 and a detection limit of 4.0 mu g L-1. The relative standard deviation (RSD) was less than 5.9% (n = 5) and the recovery values were in the range of 94-97%. Finally the proposed method was successfully applied for the analysis of patulin in apple juice and concentrate samples.