Quantitative determination of fructose, glucose, and sucrose in hard ciders and apple juice by LC–MS/MS

Abstract

AbstractThe estimated global hard cider market is over $10 billion. Methods for determining their sugar content would have important implications in their quality assurance and nutritional values. In this study, the concentrations of fructose, glucose, and sucrose were determined in commercial hard cider and apple juice samples by hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry. The optimized sample preparation method consisted of sonication, a 1:10 dilution to 70:30 acetonitrile:water, centrifugation, filtration, and an additional 1:100 dilution to a final solvent composition of 80:20 acetonitrile:water. This method was validated with respect to selectivity, linearity, limit of detection, limit of quantitation, accuracy, and precision. Limits of detection and quantitation ranged from 0.01 to 0.1 and 0.05 to 0.5 mg/L, respectively, and linear ranges spanned at least a factor of 500 with excellent linearities (R2 > 0.999). Accuracy ranged from 81.7 to 107%. The relative standard deviations for all measurements were <7%. The method was applied to 11 different cider samples, one apple ale sample, and three different apple juice samples. Among the cider samples, a correlation between the fructose and glucose concentrations was found (R2 = 0.81).