Aura's "CUKE"s are made according to V. Sobolev and J. Dorner (1) and permit "a simple, fast, reliable, and inexpensive chemical cleanup procedure ... for quantitation of aflatoxins in major important agricultural commodities by liquid chromatography." An abbreviated description of the extraction and cleanup procedure is listed below. Consult this paper for details.  The reported procedure worked for the following commodities:Corn meal, Cottonseed, Peanuts, Almonds, English Walnuts, Brazil nuts and Pistachios.For quantitation Sobolev and Dorner (1) use the HPLC method with photochemical derivatization reported by Joshua (2). The post-column photochemical reactor, "PHRED", is also available from Aura Industries, Inc.

Price of AURA CUKEs:

• 1 package containing ten bags of ten CUKEs each (total 100) $ 195.00.

• 10 packages, each containing ten bags of ten CUKEs each, (total 1000) $ 1750.00.

1) V. Sobolev and J. Dorner, Cleanup Procedure for Determination of Aflatoxins in Major Agricultural Commodities by Liquid Chromatography, J. AOAC Int., 85, 642-645 (2002).

2) Henry Joshua, Determination of Aflatoxins by Reversed-Phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography with Post-Column Photochemical Derivatization and Fluorescence Detection, Journal of Chromatography, 654, 247-254 (1993).

Extraction and cleanup procedure:
Place 100gm of commodity in blender, add 200 ml of 80:20 methanol-water, and blend. Filter mix. To 0.5 ml of filtrate add 0.5 ml acetonitrile and mix. Dispense 0.5 ml of filtrate- acetonitrile mix into CUKE, no pressure or vacuum is required. Collect eluate and inject into HPLC.