Gavilán-Ruiz JM, Carvajal-Moreno M, Rojo-Callejas F and Ruiz-Velasco S
Introduction: Aflatoxins (AFs) are fungal secondary metabolites with potent carcinogenic properties´ and pistachios are susceptible oilseeds for AF contamination. Objective: To determine the concentration of the four AFs types (AFB1, AFB2, AFG1 and AFG2) from 48 pistachio samples from Mexico, six from Turkey and 3 from Greece. Methods: The AFs of the 57 analysed samples of pistachio seeds were quantified by liquid chromatography. The calibration curves had R2 values near 1. The LOD values were low and were acceptable to identify and quantify the AFs. The recovery percentages were >80%, which indicated that the extraction method was efficient, and in the selectivity test, no interference between the retention times of the AFs and the pistachio matrix were observed. Results: This study validated an analytical method developed to quantify AFs in pistachios. All samples were contaminated with trace levels of AFs. A total of 36.4% were contaminated with AFB1 (0.10 to 4.15 ng/g), 100% of the samples had both AFB2 (0.01 to 4.00 ng/g) and AFG1 (0.02 to 1.02 ng/g), 56.4% had AFG2 (0.46 to 8.09 ng/g) and 100% were contaminated with total aflatoxin (AFt) (0.04 to 8.39 ng/g). The samples most contaminated with AFB1 (4.15 ng/g) and AFG1 (1.02 ng/g), and with AFB2 (4.00 ng/g) were from Mexico. The highest contamination by AFG2 (8.09 ng/g) and AFt (8.39 ng/g) was in one sample from Istanbul, Turkey. Conclusion: All the samples resulted contaminated with AFs although the levels do not risk the health because they are below the tolerance levels of World Health Organization (5 μg/kg for AFB1 and 10 μg/kg for AFt) and Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations (FAO) (20 μg/kg for AFB1 and 35 μg/kg for AFt).There was a significant difference between the AF content and the place of origin of the samples.