QUALITATIVE-ANALYSIS OF MYCOTOXINS USING MICELLAR ELECTROKINETIC CAPILLARY CHROMATOGRAPHY

Naturally occurring mycotoxins are separated using micellar electrokin etic capillary chromatography. Trends in the retention of these toxins , resulting from changes in mobile-phase composition and Ph, are repor ted and presented as a means of alleviating coelution problems. Two se ts of mobile-phase conditions are determined that provide unique separ ation selectivity. The facile manner by which mobile-phase conditions can be altered, without changes in instrumental configuration, allowed the acquisition of two distinctive, fully resolved chromatograms of 1 0 mycotoxins in a period of approximately 45 min. By adjusting retenti on times, using indigenous or added components in mycotoxin samples as normalization standards, it is possible to obtain coefficients of var iation in retention time that average less than 1 %. The qualitative c apabilities of this methodology are evaluated by separating randomly g enerated mycotoxin-interferent mixtures. In this study, the utilizatio n of normalized retention times applied to separations obtained with t wo sets of mobile-phase conditions permitted the identification of all the mycotoxins in rive unknown samples without any misidentifications .