Determination of 16 mycotoxins in vegetable oils using a QuEChERS method combined with high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

ABSTRACT

A simple and efficient method for determining multiple mycotoxins was developed using a QuEChERS (quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe)-based extraction procedure in vegetable oils. High-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) was used for the quantification and confirmation of 16 chemically diversified mycotoxins. Different extraction procedures were studied and optimised by spiking 16 analytes into blank matrix, and the extraction with 85% MeCN solution and C18 as cleaning sorbent allowed an efficient recovery of 72.8–105.8% with RSDs less than 7%. The limit of detection (LOD) ranged from 0.04 to 2.9 ng g^–1. The developed method was finally applied to screen mycotoxins in 62 vegetable oil samples. Zearalenone (ZEN), aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), aflatoxin B2 (AFB2), aflatoxin G1 (AFG1) and α-zearalenol (α-ZOL) were detected, with maximum concentrations of 0.59 (AFG1)–42.5 (ZEN) ng g^–1. The method developed has the advantages of high sensitivity, accuracy and selectivity, and it can be applied to the target screening of mycotoxins in real samples.

KEYWORDS:

• Mycotoxins
• vegetable oil
• QuEChERS
• HPLC-MS/MS

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation [grant number 21277017], the Basic Research Project of Key Laboratory of Liaoning Provincial Education Department [grant number LX2015023] and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant number DUT15LK40].