Abstract: Citrus fruit is susceptible to pollution by Alternaria during growth and post-harvest storage. Tenuazonic acid (TeA) is considered to be one of the most toxic mycotoxins produced by Alternaria, and constitutes a serious threat to consumers’ health and safety. Therefore, this study aimed to obtain the optimal conditions for adsorption removal of TeA from citrus juice using inactive lactic acid bacteria (LAB) as adsorbent. The optimization was implemented using a combination of one-factor-at-a-time method and response surface methodology with Box-Behnken design. The independent variables were adsorbent dosage, adsorption time, initial concentration of TeA and pH of citrus juice. The response variable was the percentage removal of TeA. An adsorption time of 11.43 h, 1.20 g/20 mL of inactive LAB, an initial TeA concentration of 250 μg/L and pH of 3.15 were determined as to be optimal. Under these optimal conditions, the percentage adsorption of TeA from citrus juice was 86.98%. A quadratic polynomial regression model was established and validated between the independent variables and the response. It turned out that the model had a high goodness?of?fit and good prediction performance.

Key words: inactive lactic acid bacteria, Alternaria mycotoxin TeA, adsorption removal, citrus juice