One-step deep eutectic solvent strategy for efficient analysis of aflatoxins in edible oils

BACKGROUND: Aflatoxins, a kind of carcinogen, have attracted increasing attention due to their toxicity and harmfulness to human health. Traditional methods for aflatoxins analysis usually involve tedious extraction steps with a subsequent derivatization process. Herein, a simple and efficient liquid-phase microextraction method based on deep eutectic solvents (DESs) for direct analysis of aflatoxins was developed. RESULTS: Adopting DESs as the extractant, we surprisingly found out that DESs could either achieve good extraction performance or play a similar role to the derivatization agent, achieving an enhancement of fluorescence intensity for direct analysis of aflatoxins by high-performance liquid chromatography combined with fluorescent detection. Under optimal conditions obtained by response surface methodology, the method provided satisfactory linear ranges (0.01–0.75 μg kg⁻¹ for AFB1 and AFG1, 0.003–0.25 μg kg⁻¹ for AFB2 and AFG2) with good determination coefficients (R² > 0.9988), a low detection limit (0.0005–0.003 μg kg⁻¹), and good recovery rates (72.05–113.54%). CONCLUSION: These results highlighted superiorities of the one-step DES strategy for analysis of aflatoxins in edible oils, providing insights for future development of efficient methods in food analysis.