Abstract
Triacylglycerols (TAGs), as the main components of edible oils and animal fats, are responsible for the nutritional value, organoleptic features and technological properties of foods; each lipid matrix shows a unique TAG profile which can serve as fingerprint to ensure the quality and authenticity of food products. The high complexity of many foodstuffs often makes untargeted elucidation of TAG components a challenging task; thus, more efficient separation techniques may be mandatory. In this research, the TAG profile of a borage (Borago officinalis) seed oil was obtained by two-dimensional comprehensive liquid chromatography (LC×LC), by the coupling of silver thiolate and octadecylsilica monodisperse materials. A total 94 TAG compounds were identified by ion trap-time of flight detection, using atmospheric pressure ionization, with the degree of unsaturation varying from 0 to 9, and partition values ranging from 36 to 56. The group-type separation afforded by this analytical approach may be useful to quickly fingerprint TAG components of oil samples.
Highlights
Nowadays, lipid analysis represents one of the most promising research fields, given the extensive involvement of these molecules in several biological processes, as well as in determining the nutritional and sensory value of different foods
The high number of possible fatty acids (FAs) combinations, differing for the total carbon number (CN), degree of unsaturation, position and configuration of double bonds (DB), results in a specific TAG profile, which is unique for each lipid matrix [2]
As for the stationary phase, two techniques have been traditionally employed for embedding Ag+ ions in the LC system: by impregnating a support with a silver salt or by binding the silver ions to an ion-exchange medium, in which Ag+ ion replaces the protons of the functional groups and forms a stable ionic interaction, or by adding a silver salt to the mobile phase during a conventional RPLC separation (the latter being incompatible with mass spectrometry (MS) detection [7,8]
Summary
Lipid analysis represents one of the most promising research fields, given the extensive involvement of these molecules in several biological processes, as well as in determining the nutritional and sensory value of different foods. The obvious limitations have been the reduced commercial availability of these type of stationary phases, a short column life (due to loss of Ag+ ions), and poor reproducibility (due to the variable Ag+ content) These drawbacks have in turn posed significant issues in performing experiments in different laboratories, by keeping the same analytical conditions. The coupling between Ag+- and NARP-LC can be conveniently employed in multidimensional separation approaches, aiming to increase the number of resolved compounds, as demonstrated by Holcapek et al, for the analysis of TAGs in plant oils and animal fats, with atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) MS detection [15]. The use of MS represents an added dimension to the LC separation system, unravelling post-column co-eluting components and enabling the identification of 94 TAGs in the sample in a reliable and repeatable way
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