Bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) is widely used in India for its medicinal properties. Sometimes its consumption as a fruit or juice can lead to serious health issues due to the presence of toxic cucurbitacins (Cuc) like Cuc B at high concentration. In the present study, a molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) based method was developed to quantify Cuc B in commercial bottle gourd juice. Cuc B quantification was also done in peel and pulp of fresh bottle gourd fruit. Developed MIP was superior to NIP (non-imprinted polymer) in terms of equilibrium binding, solid-phase extraction, selectivity, and loading capacity of Cuc B. Scatchard plot analysis, adsorption kinetics, and surface area study further strengthen the fact that prepared imprinted polymer was better than NIP for Cuc extraction. TLC and high-resolution LC-MS based analysis revealed that MIP selectively extracts Cuc B from all the studied samples. It was further observed that gamma irradiation and β-glucosidase treatment did not have any significant (p > 0.05) effect on Cuc concentration. The quantity of Cuc in 100 g of juice, peel, and pulp was 2.81 ± 0.26, 3.37 ± 0.31, and 2.39 ± 0.21 mg, respectively. Analytical method validation indicates that the MIP based method was highly linear, precise, and accurate to rapidly quantify toxic Cuc B in bottle gourd consequently assuring its quality.
Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13197-022-05600-3.
Keywords: Cucurbitacin; Food quality assurance; Lagenaria siceraria; Method development; Molecularly imprinted polymer; Rapid quantification.
© Association of Food Scientists & Technologists (India) 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.