Determination of 63 compounds illegally added in tea, substitute tea and beverage foods by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

A method based on ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) was developed for the simultaneous determination of 63 compounds illegally added in tea, substitute tea, and beverage products. The samples were extracted by ultrasonic extraction using methanol, and the analytes were separated on the Thermo Acclaim RSLC C18 chromatographic column (100 mm×2.1 mm, 2.2 μm) by gradient elution using 5 mmol/L ammonium formate solution containing 0.1% (v/v) formic acid and 0.1% (v/v) formic acid acetonitrile as the mobile phase. The electrospray ion source was operated in the positive ion mode using the dynamic multi-reaction monitoring (dMRM) method, and the results were quantified by the external standard method. The correlation coefficients (R2) of the linear calibration curves were greater than 0.99 in the corresponding mass concentration ranges, and the limits of quantification (LOQs) for the analytes were 0.10-2.50 mg/kg. The average recoveries at three spiked levels ranged from 62.4% to 129.4%. The RSDs of the injection precision and the repeatability of samples were in the range 0.3%-9.6% (n=6). Thus, the proposed method is simple, rapid, accurate, reliable, and applicable for the detection of the illegal addition of antipyretic and analgesic affect compounds in tea, substitute tea and beverage food.