Simultaneous Determination of Five Cannabinoids in Dark Chocolate with High Performance Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Based on the physicochemical properties of chocolate and cannabinoids, a method for the determination of five cannabinoids in dark chocolate by high performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry was developed by optimizing the pretreatment and detection methods. The validity of the method was verified by precision, repeatability and recovery experiments. Results showed that the linear range of five cannabinoids was 0.05~5.0 μg/mL with the linear correlation coefficient R²≥0.997, the limit of quantitation (LOQ, S/N=10) was 0.15 mg/kg. The RSDs of intraday precision and interday precision were below 5%, which indicated that the method had good precision and stability. The recoveries at three levels (1.25, 2.50, 5.00 mg/kg) were from 91.8% to 109.0%, with RSDs<5%, indicating that the method had high accuracy. The established method is simple, rapid and accurate, and it can lay an experimental foundation for the establishment of the standard method for the determination of cannabinoids in chocolate, and provide technical reserves for strengthening the international supervision of import and export of cannabinoids added food.