Rapid and accurate identification of adulterated ingredients in lotus root powder based on liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry and MS-IDF

Abstract

Although lotus root powder has high nutritional value and good therapeutic effects, there is still few reports on quality analysis of lotus root powder. In this study, we have established a novel method to identify the source and level of adulteration in lotus root powder, based on self-developed derivatization reagents and narrow range mass loss filtration technology. By using this approach, 80 species of oligosaccharides have been identified in lotus root powder, and 18 of them are characteristic and common oligosaccharides for lotus root powder from different places, which might be helpful to distinguish between oligosaccharides and their common adulterants. More importantly, in combination with multivariate statistical methods, the composition proportion of adulterants can also be effectively determined (from 5% to 95%). Furthermore, it is worthy to be mentioned that it is a pioneer report of using narrow range quality loss filtering technology towards successful detection and identification of food ingredients, which achieves rapid detection of adulterated components and their proportions in lotus root powder. In short, the approach of using mass defect filter is effective in sugar spectra analysis, which might be promising for simple, sensitive, and accurate food quality control.