Food Safety Assessment and Residue Burden Profiling of Pesticides, Aflatoxins, and Ochratoxin-A in Three Commercial Chilli Varieties

Abstract

Chilli is among the most popularly consumed and commercially exported spices from India; nevertheless, food safety investigations involving the concurrent estimation of pesticide residues, aflatoxins, and ochratoxin-A in different chilli commercial cultivars have been poorly studied. As such, this study sought to determine the food safety implications and residue burden of pesticides, aflatoxins, and ochratoxin-A in three chilli commercial cultivars, including Teja, Byadgi, and Guntur Sannam. Multi-residue determination for pesticides was done using both LC-MS and GC-MS, whereas mycotoxins were estimated using an HPLC-FLD method after immunoaffinity column clean-up. A total of 28 pesticide residues and 4 mycotoxin parameters were studied in a residue burden model and Kruskal-Wallis statistics. Complete detection of all pesticides and mycotoxins was observed in all varieties, suggesting extensive chemical and fungal contamination of chilli. Among the cultivars, Teja had the highest total pesticide burden of 3.6834 mg/kg and mean pesticide content of 0.1316 mg/kg, mainly attributed to acetamiprid, prochloraz, imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, and clothianidin. Conversely, Guntur Sannam demonstrated a high mycotoxin burden of 32.3801 µg/kg with a mean of 8.0950 µg/kg, signifying a serious aflatoxin and ochratoxin-A contamination problem. However, the Byadgi cultivar showed relatively low pesticide burden of 1.9521 mg/kg and a mycotoxin burden of 5.4957 µg/kg. In total, nine pesticide residues and three mycotoxins were significantly associated across varieties (p<0.05) via Kruskal-Wallis analysis.