Simultaneous determination of four water-soluble vitamins in fortified infant foods by ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry.
A novel ultra-performance liquid chromatography electrospray ionization tandem triple quadrupole mass spectrometry method for the simultaneous determination of four water-soluble vitamins, including vitamin B5 (VB5), vitamin B8 (VB8), vitamin B9 (VB9), and vitamin B12 (VB12) in fortified infant foods is developed and validated. A reverse phase UPLC separation system consisting of a Waters ACQUITY UPLC BEH C-18 column (2.1 mm x 100 mm i.d., 1.7 microm) and a binary gradient acetonitrile-water mobile phase is applied for the separation of the four water-soluble vitamins. Formic acid is spiked into the mobile phase to enhance the ionization efficiency. Tandem MS-MS analysis is performed in multi-reaction monitoring mode (MRM). Product-ion traces at m/z 220.1 --> 89.9 for VB5, 245.1 --> 227.1 for VB8, 442.3 --> 295.2 for VB9, and 678.9 --> 147.0 for VB12 are used for quantitation of the corresponding vitamins, and traces at m/z 455.5 --> 308.0 are used for methotrexate (internal standard). Limits of quantitation (LOQs) are 0.016, 0.090, 0.020, and 0.019 microg/L for VB5, VB8, VB9, and VB12, respectively. Intra- and inter-day precisions for the determination of the four vitamins are better than 6.84% and 12.26% in relative standard deviations, and recoveries for the four vitamins are in the range of 86.0~101.5%. The developed approach is applied for the determination of the trace amounts of the vitamins in fortified milk powers and fortified rice powers.
Lu
Baiyi
B
Department of Food Science and Nutrition, College of Biosystem Engineering and Food Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310029, China.
Ren
Yiping
Y
Huang
Baifen
B
Liao
Wenqun
W
Cai
Zengxuan
Z
Tie
Xiaowei
X
D002853:Chromatography, Liquid / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D005527:Food, Fortified / Q000032:analysis*; D007225:Infant Food / Q000032:analysis*; D010205:Pantothenic Acid / Q000032:analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D053719:Tandem Mass Spectrometry / Q000379:methods*; D014805:Vitamin B 12 / Q000032:analysis; D014815:Vitamins / Q000032:analysis*
D014815:Vitamins; D010205:Pantothenic Acid; D014805:Vitamin B 12