Direct determination of 3-chloro-1,2-propanediol esters in beef flavoring products by ultra-performance liquid chromatography tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry

Abstract

A sensitive ultra-performance liquid chromatography tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry (UPLC-TQ-MS) method coupled with amino solid-phase extraction was developed for the direct determination of 3-chloro-1,2-propanediol (3-MCPD) esters which were firstly detected in the natural beef flavoring products. The analyzed 3-MCPD esters in this paper contain three monoesters and six diesters. The validation data indicated that the proposed method provided good linearity, repeatability and sensitivity. The method showed a good linearity within the range of 40–200 μg kg⁻¹ for monoesters and 20–100 μg kg⁻¹ for diesters with the determination coefficients (R²) ranging from 0.9912 to 0.9993. The limits of detection (LODs) for monoesters and diesters of 3-MCPD were in the range of 0.04–5.0 μg kg⁻¹ and 0.13–16.0 μg kg⁻¹, respectively. The method accuracy was confirmed by higher sample recovery which ranged from 80.5 to 113.7%. The repeatability expressed as intra-day precision ranged from 0.8 to 9.9% and inter-day precision varied from 2.8 to 13.8%. The validated method was successfully applied for determination of 3-MCPD esters in beef flavoring products.