A comparative identification of ochratoxin A in longan fruit pulp by high performance liquid chromatography-fluorescence detection and electron spray ionization-mass spectrometry.

Harvested longan (Dimocarpus longan Lour.) fruit are susceptible to decay caused by both bacterial and fungal infections. Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a kind of mycotoxin produced by a number of fungi. In this study, OTA was extracted from longan fruit pulp by 80% methanol and then loaded on C-18 solid-phase extraction columns. The extract solution was then analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography - fluorescence detection (HPLC-FD) and an electron spray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS), respectively. The HPLC-FD analysis showed that a compound similar to OTA might exist in longan fruit pulp, but further analysis by the ESI-MS method demonstrated that OTA was not present in the longan pulp, indicating that the presence of OTA in longan fruit pulp detected by the HPLC-FD analysis needed to be confirmed by the ESI-MS method.