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Determination of mycotoxins in different food commodities by ultra‐high‐pressure liquid chromatography coupled to triple quadrupole mass spectrometry
Author(s) -
Beltrán Eduardo,
Ibáñez María,
Sancho Juan Vicente,
Hernández Félix
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
rapid communications in mass spectrometry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.528
H-Index - 136
eISSN - 1097-0231
pISSN - 0951-4198
DOI - 10.1002/rcm.4077
Subject(s) - chemistry , chromatography , mycotoxin , ochratoxin a , aflatoxin , mass spectrometry , triple quadrupole mass spectrometer , matrix (chemical analysis) , detection limit , analytical chemistry (journal) , tandem mass spectrometry , selected reaction monitoring , food science
A rapid multianalyte‐multiclass method with little sample manipulation has been developed for the simultaneous determination of eleven mycotoxins in different food commodities by using ultra‐high‐pressure liquid chromatography coupled to triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (UHPLC/MS/MS). Toxins were extracted from the samples with acetonitrile/water (80:20, v/v) 0.1% HCOOH and, after a two‐fold dilution with water, directly injected into the system. Thanks to the fast high‐resolution separation of UHPLC, the eleven mycotoxins were separated by gradient elution in only 4 min. The method has been validated in three food matrices (maize kernels, dry pasta (wheat), and eight‐multicereal babyfood (wheat, maize, rice, oat, barley, rye, sorghum, millet)) at four different concentration levels. Satisfactory recoveries were obtained (70–110%) and precision (expressed as relative standard deviation) was typically below 15% with very few exceptions. Quantification of samples was carried out with matrix‐matched standards calibration. The lowest concentration successfully validated in sample was as low as 0.5 µg/kg for aflatoxins and ochratoxin A in babyfood, and 20 µg/kg for the rest of the selected mycotoxins in all matrices tested. Deoxynivalenol could be only validated at 200 µg/kg, due the poor sensitivity for this mycotoxin analysis. With only two exceptions (HT‐2 and deoxynivalenol), the limits of detection (LODs), estimated for a signal‐to‐noise ratio of 3 from the chromatograms of samples spiked at the lowest level validated, varied between 0.1 and 1 µg/kg in the three food matrices tested. The method was applied to the analysis of different kinds of samples. Positive findings were confirmed by acquiring two transitions (Q quantification, q confirmation) and evaluating the Q/q ratio. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.