Simultaneous screening and analysis of 155 veterinary drugs in livestock foods using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography tandem quadrupole linear-ion-trap mass spectrometry

Abstract

Veterinary drugs are widely used to improve the health and growth of livestock. The supervision of these residues is necessary to ensure food safety. A high-throughput method based on Oasis PRiME HLB with solid phase extraction for simultaneous qualitative and quantitative analysis of 155 veterinary drugs in livestock foods was developed by the ultra-high performance liquid chromatography tandem quadrupole linear-ion-trap mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QTRAP-MS). The limits of detection and quantification ranged from 0.5 μg/kg to 5 μg/kg and 2 μg/kg to 20 μg/kg, respectively. For over 85% of the analytes, the recoveries were between 60% and 120%. The positive simulated samples perfectly matched with a purity fit value over 70% from the self-built library. The screening results of UHPLC-QTRAP-MS were almost consistent with UHPLC tandem quadrupole-exactive orbitrap mass spectrometry (UHPLC-Q-Exactive Orbitrap/MS). The evaluated UHPLC-QTRAP-MS method was powerful and reliable for the screening and quantification of veterinary drugs in real samples.

Keywords: Livestock foods; Multi-residue analysis; Qualitative screening; Quantitative analysis; Ultra-high performance liquid chromatography tandemquadrupole linear-ion-trap mass spectrometry; Veterinary drugs.