Simultaneous and Sensitive Determination of Multiple Mycotoxins in Wines by UHPLC Triple Quadrupole Mass Spectrometry Authors

A method for simultaneous determination of eight mycotoxins in wines, including aflatoxins B1, B2, G1, and G2, patulin, deoxynivalenol, ochratoxin A, and zearalanone was developed. The samples were initially extracted using acetonitrile in the presence of sodium chloride and magnesium sulfate. The resultant extracts were then subjected to concentration by rotary evaporation and redissolution followed by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) coupled with JetStream electrospray (JetStream ESI) triple quadrupole mass spectrometric detection under the multiple reaction monitoring mode. It has demonstrated that the limits of detection (LOD) for the eight mycotoxins in red and white wines ranged from 0.050 to 3.3 μg/L and 0.030 to 8.0 μg/L respectively, and the limits of quantitation (LOQs) ranged from 0.15 to 12.5 μg/L and 0.10 to 25 μg/L respectively. Linear responses were obtained for all eight mycotoxins in two orders of magnitude of the examined matrix-matched calibration ranges with linear regression coefficients of 0.995 or above. At the two spiking levels examined, the recoveries were all within 59.6–132.4% with RSD between 1.2–21.1% (n = 6). Among them, the majority of the spiked samples had recoveries within the range of 70%–120% with the RSDs below 10%. The developed method is rapid, accurate, and sensitive, and thus can be applied for high throughput routine screening of multiple mycotoxins in wine and may potentially extend to other fermented alcoholic beverages.