Comparison of phosphate estimating methods in the presence of phytic acid for the determination of phytase activity.

Phosphate released from phytic acid can be used as a measure of phytase activity. However, most of the phosphate estimation methods have not examined the interference or interaction of phytic acid in the assay. In this article, we report the kinetics and influence of unreduced phytic acid on phosphate estimation by three of the often-used methods for phytase estimation, the AOAC, Cooper-Gowing, and Fiske-Subbarow methods. Our results show that the AOAC method is most suitable to estimate the phytase activity in the presence of phytate in the medium. In the Fiske and Subbarow method, we noticed that the time factor plays a role in the interference of the phytic acid; especially the readings taken during the second hour of incubation are influenced by the presence of phytic acid. The method of Cooper and Gowing is labor-intensive and is prone to give error values at higher concentrations.