Resumen de Iprodione content of wines: where do we draw the line?
David M. Goldberg, George J. Soleas, Alex Karumanchiri
In order to define a safer, yet realistically attainable, limit for iprodione in commercial wine‐making, its concentrations were measured in 546 finished commercial wines using a high‐performance liquid chromatography method with an ultra‐violet detector. They were also measured in bulk raw wines and juices totalling 1782 and 1875, respectively, over a 5 year period from 1992 to 1997 using a gas chromatograph linked to a nitrogen‐phosphorous detector. In only 2.5% of the commercial wines did the iprodione concentration exceed 300 μg l‐1, most frequently in wines from New York, New Zealand and Oregon. Of the raw wines and juices, the proportion of products with iprodione concentrations < 30 μg l‐1 was very much greater than in the case of commercial wines, but 3.6% of the wines and 9.2% of the juices had concentrations > 300 μg l‐1. Such high values were found much more commonly in white raw wines and juices than in red, but there was no significant difference in the incidence of values > 300 μg l‐1 between white and red commercial wines. Vintage‐dependent differences were observed for raw wines but not for juices, with those from 1994–97 having a higher incidence of concentrations > 30 μg l‐1 than the two previous vintages. The data in this study suggest that, on the basis of good manufacturing practice, a limit of 300 μg l‐1 iprodione is easily achievable in commercial wines, and that current limits are much too lax.
