Determination of Four Plant Toxins in Cold Dishes by High Performance Liquid Chromatography-tandem Mass Spectrometry

High performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry(HPLC-MS/MS)was developed for the simultaneous determination of four plant toxins,including solanine,ricinine,colchicine and rotenone in cold dishes. The samples were extracted with n-hexane:dichloromethane(1:1,v/v),dried by nitrogen and re-dissolved. The analytes were separated on a ZORBAX Eclipse Plus C₁₈ column(4.6 mm×50 mm,1.8 μm),then determined in multiple reaction monitoring(MRM)mode with positive electrospray ionization(ESI⁺)mode,and quantified by the external standard method. The results of method showed the linearity in the range of 0.5~200 μg/L,there were good linear relationships for the four plant toxins with correlation coefficients(r)larger than 0.999. At three different spiked levels,the average recoveries for solanine,ricinine,colchicine and rotenone were 72.1%~99.8% with relative standard deviations(RSDs,n=7)of 0.3%~8.2%. The limits of detection(S/N=3)and quantitation(S/N=10)of the method were 0.10~0.82 and 0.32~2.72 μg/kg,respectively. The method was suitable for the rapid and simultaneous detection of four plant toxins in cold dishes due to its advantages of simplicity and sensitivity.