Analysis of zearalenone and α ‐zearalenol in 100 foods and medicinal plants determined by HPLC‐FLD and positive confirmation by LC‐MS‐MS

Background Mycotoxins, which may contaminate many foods and medicinal plants, are poisonous to humans. A high‐performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection ( HPLC‐FLD ) method was successfully developed for analysing the contamination levels of zearalenone ( ZON ) and its metabolite α ‐zearalenol ( α ‐ ZOL ) in 100 widely consumed foods and medicinal plants in China. Samples were extracted with methanol–water (80:20, v/v), and cleaned up by using an immunoaffinity column.Results The limits of detection of this developed method for ZON and α ‐ ZOL were 4 µg kg −1 and 2.5 µg kg −1 , respectively. Recoveries for the samples spiked with three levels (30, 60 and 300 µg kg −1 for ZON and α ‐ ZOL ) ranged from 85.8% to 96.1% with relative standard deviation ( RSD ) of 2.6–7.1% for ZON , and from 89.9% to 98.7% with RSD of 1.9–9.2% for α ‐ ZOL . Twelve (12%) of these tested samples were contaminated with ZON at levels ranging from 5.3 to 295.8 µg kg −1 . The most contaminated samples were Semen coicis, four of them in a concentration level exceeding 60 µg kg −1 ‘maximum level’ (range 68.9–119.6 µg kg −1 ). Positive samples were further confirmed by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry.Conclusion The results suggest that it is necessary to control ZON contamination in medicinal plants, especially Semen coicis. This is a successful study on the analysis of ZON and α ‐ ZOL in medicinal plants in China by HPLC‐FLD . Immunoaffinity clean‐up and HPLC‐FLD proved to have broad applicability in the field of simultaneously detecting ZON and α ‐ ZOL in foods and medicinal plants and other complicated matrices.© 2012 Society of Chemical Industry