Occurrence and Determination of Tropane Alkaloids in Food and Feed

Abstract

The determination of tropane alkaloids (TAs) in food and feed is gaining importance after the detection of mainly atropine and scopolamine in cereal and tea/herbal infusion samples at levels that may represent a risk to human health, in particular for infants and young children. Relevant legislation was published in the European Union (EU) recently. This article aims at presenting the most recent developments in the sample preparation and analytical determination of this group of substances in food and feed. Considerations about related matrices are also included with the purpose of gaining insight into other alternative and advanced analytical approaches. A review of the occurrence and levels of TAs in food and feed until 2019 covering EU‐wide surveys, data archived in the official notifications repository and the scientific literature is carried out as well, since such data are needed for any risk assessment.

Determination of tropane alkaloids in corn puffs by the LC-MS/MS

“…weeds containing tropane alkaloids, with the species of family Solanaceae being the most prominent, such as Datura stramonium. The parts of this plant have been found as the accidental impurities in the most important agricultural crops -maize, buckwheat, sunflower, soybean, millet and other (Gonçalves et al, 2020). In order to obtain more occurrence data on the presence of TAs in food, the EU Commission adopted Recommendation 2015/976/EU1 on the monitoring of the presence of TAs in food (EC, 2015).…”