Occurrence of ochratoxin-A (OT-A) in green and commercial coffee samples

A total of 148 coffee samples were tested for the natural occurrence of ochratoxin-A (OT-A). Among these, 100 (68%) and 19 (13%) samples had OT-A contamination of 0.1-1.0 ppb, and 1.1-5.0 ppb, respectively and 3 samples had >5 ppb. The highest level of OT-A contamination was 11.7 ppb in a ‘Robusta’ cherry. The results indicated that majority of the Indian coffee samples analyzed contained insignificant level of OT-A.