Rapid Screening of 30 Plant Growth Regulators and Quinolone Antibiotics in Bean Sprout Samples

A method was developed for the simultaneous determination of 30 plant growth regulators residues and quinolone antibiotics residues in bean sprouts by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) with pass-through solid-phase extraction. The samples were extracted by 90% acetonitrile containing 0.1% formic acid and purified with PRiME HLB solid-phase extraction, gradient elution with acetonitrile and water (containing 0.1% formic acid). The target compounds were separated on an Agilent SB-Aq RRHD column, then detected by electrospray positive and negative ion multiple reaction monitoring mode. The target compounds were quantified by using the matrix-matched standard calibration. The result showed that the correlation coefficients greater than 0.991 in the range of 2~500 μg/L, the detection limit was 0.04~1.67 μg/kg, the quantitative limit was 0.1~5.6 μg/kg, the average recovery was 74.0%~113.5%, and the relative standard deviation was 0.6%~7.7% (n=6). The method is simple and sensitive, can be used for rapid screening of 30 plant growth regulators and quinolones in bean sprouts.