Ultrasound Assisted Method Development for the Determination of Selected Sulfonamides in Honey Using Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

M. Manimekalai¹, Anand Sheshadri², K. Suresh Kumar¹ and Ashish Rawson*¹

¹Department of Food Safety and Quality Testing, Indian Institute of Food Processing Technology, Thanjavur, 613005, India.

²Agilent Technologies, Bangalore, 560048, India.

Corresponding Author E-mail: ashishrawson@gmail.com

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/bbra/2745

ABSTRACT: Honey is a highly valuable natural product, which is consumed by people of all age groups unaware of the high load of veterinary drug residues present. Sulfonamides are one such class of veterinary drugs, which are used in apiculture in higher amounts and impose a lot of negative health effects. This paper describes an analytical method developed for simultaneous determination of two Sulfonamides (Sulfamethizole and Trimethoprim) in honey using liquid chromatography- tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Suitable fragmentor voltage and collision energy were optimised for both the analytes. Five different sample preparation techniques based on ultrasonication were evaluated. In which ultrasonication at 80% amplitude, 5 minutes at 45°C gave improved recoveries. On validation, the developed method showed good linearity with r² values in the range of 0.98-0.99 for both the sulfonamides. The effect of matrix on the method developed was evaluated and was found that the sample matrix does not pose considerable interferences with excellent linearities with r² values above 0.95 for both the analytes. The method developed was found to be very selective and can find application in routine analysis for the determination of sulfonamides from honey samples.

KEYWORDS: Honey; LC-MS/MS; Sulfonamides; Ultrasound

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