Rapid screening and quantification of multi-class multi-residue veterinary drugs in royal jelly by ultra performance liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry

Abstract A simple and rapid multi-class multi-residue analytical method was developed for the screening and quantification of veterinary drugs in royal jelly by ultra performance liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-QTOF-MS). A total of 90 veterinary drugs investigated belonged to more than 14 families such as lincomycins, macrolides, sulfonamides, quinolones, tetracyclines, β-agonists, β-lactams, sedatives, β-receptor antagonists, sex hormones, glucocorticoids, nitroimidazoles, benzimidazoles, nitrofurans, and the others. A modified quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe (QuEChERS) procedure was used for the sample preparation without solid-phase extraction step. The linearity, sensitivity, accuracy, repeatability, and reproducibility of the method were fully validated. The response of the detector was linear for each target compounds in wide concentration range (at least, two orders of magnitude) with correlation coefficient (R 2 ) of 0.9921–0.9999. The range of the limit of quantification for these compounds in the royal jelly ranged from 0.21 to 20 μg/kg. The repeatability and reproducibility were in the range of 3.01–11.6% and 5.97–14.9%, respectively. The average recoveries ranged from 70.21 to 120.1% with relative standard deviation of 1.77–9.90% at three concentration levels. For the screening method, the data of the precursor and product ions of the target analytes were simultaneously acquired under the All Ions MS/MS mode in a single run. A homemade database including the elemental composition, accurate masses, retention time, isotopic pattern data of the target ions the characteristic in-source fragment ions was utilized for the confirmation and identification of the target compounds. The applicability of the screening method was verified by applying to real royal jelly samples, and certain veterinary drugs were detected in some cases.