Highly sensitive separation and characterization of multiple mycotoxins by supercritical fluid chromatography combined with ion mobility quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry.

Abstract

Addressing the growing demand for efficient and green analytical techniques in food safety, this study established a novel supercritical fluid chromatography coupled with ion mobility quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SFC-IM-QTOF/MS) approach for rapid identification of multiple mycotoxins in complex matrices, which demonstrated clear advantages in analysis speed and solvent consumption over conventional methods. This method was systematically optimized and enabled the rapid determination of 20 mycotoxins, providing collision cross-section values as a stable and reliable identification marker, and the fragmentation patterns of typical compounds were analyzed. The developed SFC-IM-QTOF/MS method demonstrated good linearity (r2 > 0.9985), precision (RSD < 4.883 %), and low limits of detection (0.0012-0.1685 μg/mL). Moreover, the approach was successfully applied to the simultaneous determination of typical mycotoxins in corn and walnut, with recoveries ranging from 78.72 % to 113.12 %, which was acceptable within analytical standards.