Degradation of aflatoxins in apple juice by pulsed light and the analysis of their degradation products

This study investigated the effect of pulsed light (PL) on the degradation of aflatoxins in apple juice by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and analyzed aflatoxins degradation products by liquid chromatography-quadruple time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-qTOF/MS). The recovery rate of determination was 97.7–112.3%. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) of aflatoxin B1(AFB1), aflatoxin B2 (AFB2), aflatoxin G1 (AFG1), and aflatoxin G2 (AFG2) was 0.29, 0.07, 0.41, 0.08 μg/L and 0.87, 0.23, 1.22, 0.24 μg/L, respectively. The results showed that the degradation rates of aflatoxins increased with the reduction in the depth of the juice layer and the distance from the lamp. The degradation rates of AFB1, AFB2, AFG1, and AFG2 were 72.09%, 73.65%, 57.06%, and 69.69% after 40 flashes, respectively. The eight major degradation products were deduced by LC-qTOF/MS. Based on the structure-activity relationship analysis, the toxicity of degradation products was lower than aflatoxins. The quality of apple juice was not greatly affected by the PL treatment. Therefore, pulsed light is a promising technology to degrade aflatoxins.