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Hyphenation of supercritical fluid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry for fast determination of four aflatoxins in edible oil
Author(s) -
Lei Fang,
Li Chenglong,
Zhou Shuang,
Wang Dan,
Zhao Yunfeng,
Wu Yongning
Publication year - 2016
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.7619
Subject(s) - chemistry , chromatography , mass spectrometry , supercritical fluid chromatography , tandem mass spectrometry , aflatoxin , supercritical fluid , electrospray , electrospray ionization , sample preparation , high performance liquid chromatography , organic chemistry , food science
Rationale Aflatoxins (AFTs) are of great concern all over the world. Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) has the advantage of fast, high resolution and excellent compatibility with a broad range of organic solvents and samples, thus hyphenating SFC with tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) can be used for the easy and fast determination of AFTs in edible oils. Methods Edible oil was spiked with isotope‐labeled aflatoxin standards, diluted with hexane and extracted with acetonitrile. The extraction was directly loaded to an SFC apparatus and separated on a UPC 2 2‐EP column with CO 2 ‐methanol gradient elution. A post‐column make‐up flow was introduced to facilitate mass spectrometry performance, and the mixture was analyzed by MS/MS with an electrospray ionization (ESI) source. Results The SFC conditions including separation column, modifier and sample solvent were optimized, and the four target aflatoxins were baseline separated. The ESI interface parameters were also investigated, implicating the make‐up flow as a critical factor for sensitive determination by SFC‐MS/MS. The LOQs for the AFTs were 0.05–0.12 μg L −1 , while the RSDs were lower than 8.5%. Conclusions Supercritical fluid chromatography was successfully coupled to tandem mass spectrometry to establish a simple, fast and sensitive method for the analysis of four aflatoxins in edible oil. This shows the combination of SFC‐MS/MS has great potential in determination of trace contaminants in food. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.