Abstract:

Patulin (PAT) is a potential risk factor that threatens the fruit and vegetable industry and health of consumers. Existing physical and chemical methods have drawbacks such as environmental pollution and insufficient effects, while biodegradation is gradually becoming mainstream. Lactic acid bacteria were isolated from fermented products to explore the effectiveness and influencing conditions of experimental strains on PAT degradation in this study. A dominant strain was screened out from 12 strains of lactic acid bacteria after PAT degradation effect testing, and was identified as Levilactobacillus brevis by biologic identification. Under the conditions of temperature 37 ℃, pH value>3, and bacterial solution concentrations of 4×10⁸ mL^-1, more than 95% of PAT in concentration of 1~100 μg·mL^-1 was degraded. Kinetics analysis indicated that its efficient degradation occurred within 0-6 h, which followed the first-order kinetics with its equation being ln(C₀/C_t)=0.472 05t+0.012 74, R²=0.99, and one potential degradation product, identified as hydroascladiol, was found. In summary, the experimental strain has good development potential for degrading PAT.

Key words: patulin, lactic acid bacteria, degradation kinetics, degradation product