TY - JOUR AB - Purpose– The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of ochratoxin A (OTA) in chickpea samples in northern Iran and to study the effect of thermal treatment on ochratoxin content of the samples.Design/methodology/approach– For this purpose, 32 chickpea samples were collected from retail stores of four cities in Mazandaran province in the north of Iran. Samples were soaked in potable water and cooked, respectively, for 3.5 and 4 h. Then the raw and cooked samples and the soaking water were analyzed for OTA determination by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technique.Findings– Results showed that six raw samples (18.75 per cent) contained detectable amounts of OTA by average concentration of 5.9±3.7 which is lower than national standards. The highest and lowest concentration of OTA in raw samples was 2.1 and 12.5 ppb, so chickpea is not a source for OTA poisoning. Increasing the time of cooking led to slight degradation of OTA but according to statistical analysis and LSD test, only after five hours, thermal treatment caused OTA to degrade significantly (p<0.05). During soaking and thermal processing, leakage of OTA to the water partly occurred so that the OTA content of soaking water is detectable.Originality/value– Few research studies have been done on OTA detection in legumes and specially chickpea samples in the world and no research has been done to evaluate the effect of cooking process on OTA in chickpea. VL - 43 IS - 3 SN - 0034-6659 DO - 10.1108/00346651311327945 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/00346651311327945 AU - Rahimi Khadije AU - Mohamadi Sani Ali AU - Gholampour Azizi Eisa PY - 2013 Y1 - 2013/01/01 TI - Effect of thermal treatment on ochratoxin content of chickpea T2 - Nutrition & Food Science PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 285 EP - 290 Y2 - 2024/05/11 ER -