Aura Cukes™

Aura's CUKEs™ are made according to V. Sobolev and J. Dorner (1) and permit "a simple, fast, reliable, and inexpensive chemical cleanup procedure ... for quantitation of aflatoxins in major important agricultural commodities by liquid chromatography." An abbreviated description of the extraction and cleanup procedure is listed below. The reported procedure has been shown to work for the following commodities:  Corn meal, Cottonseed, Peanuts, Almonds, English Walnuts, Brazil nuts and Pistachios.  Consult Sobolev and Dorner (2002) for further details on the clean-up procedure (1).  For quantitation of aflatoxins in your sample post-extraction, use the HPLC method with photochemical derivatization reported by Joshua (2). The post-column photochemical reactor, PHRED™, is also available from Aura Industries, Inc.

Extraction and cleanup procedure of Sobolev and Dorner (1):

Place 100g of commodity in blender, add 200ml of 80:20 (methanol-water), and blend.  Filter mix through filter paper. To 0.5mL of filtrate add 0.5mL acetonitrile and mix. Dispense 0.5 ml of filtrate-acetonitrile mix into CUKE™, no pressure or vacuum is required. Collect eluent and inject 20μL sample into HPLC.

1) V. Sobolev and J. Dorner, Cleanup Procedure for Determination of Aflatoxins in Major Agricultural Commodities by Liquid Chromatography, J. AOAC Int., 85, 642-645 (2002).

2) Henry Joshua, Determination of Aflatoxins by Reversed-Phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography with Post-Column Photochemical Derivatization and Fluorescence Detection, Journal of Chromatography, 654, 247-254 (1993).