A QTRAP-based mass spectrometry method for the detection and confirmation of nine sweeteners in Chinese rice wine

Abstract

A rapid and sensitive QTRAP mass spectrometric method was developed for the detection and confirmation of nine sweeteners (acesulfame, saccharin sodium, sodium cyclamate, aspartame, alitame, sucralose, neotame, stevia extract, and advantage) in Chinese rice wine. The samples with different sugar contents were diluted with ultrapure water, and the standard working solution was prepared by adding 1.0 mL of Chinese rice wine blank matrix to the standard series solution. The target was separated by a Kinetex 2.6 μm F5 100 A LC Column 100 × 2.1 mm chromatographic column, MRM-IDA-EPA by applying QTRAP mass spectrometry composite mode acquisition was applied to obtain MRM data as well as highly sensitive secondary fragmentation full-spectrum data at the same time to establish a standard library of nine Chinese rice wine sweeteners for accurate characterization and MRM data peak area (external standard method) quantification by automatic comparison with the library of standards. The experiments showed that the correlation coefficients of the standard curves of the nine sweeteners were greater than 0.997 in the range of 10 ~ 500 µg/L standard working series solutions, and the limits of quantification of the method were in the range of 0.8–88.0 µg/kg, with spiked recoveries of 80.3%~118.8% and relative standard deviations (RSDs) of 0.74%~6.40%. QTRAP mass spectrometry was used for the determination of the nine sweeteners in Chinese rice wine with easy and fast pretreatment, simple operation, high accuracy, and sensitivity.