Simultaneous Determination of Fifteen Polyphenols in Fruit Juice Using Ultrahigh-Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry Combining Dispersive Liquid-Liquid Microextraction

Abstract

Polyphenols are secondary metabolites of plants and used as effective antioxidants in dietary supplements, whose main sources are fruits, vegetables, and grains. To clarify the content and distribution of polyphenols in different fruit species samples accurately, a rapid and sensitive ultrahigh-pressure liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-ESI-MS/MS) method combining dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) was developed for quantitative determination of fifteen polyphenol compounds in fruit juice. In this method, the targets were first extracted from 1 g of fruit juice sample using 10 mL of 80% ethanol solution by ultrasonic-assisted extraction (UAE). Then, 1.0 mL of UAE extracted solution, 60 μL of n-octanol and 2.0 mL of H2O were performed in the following DLLME procedure. A C18 reversed-phase column, ZORBAX SB (100 × 4.6 mm, 3.5 μm), was proposed under gradient elution with 0.1% formic acid aqueous solution and methanol mobile phases for the determination of 15 polyphenols, allowing us to obtain polyphenolic profiles in less than 23.0 min. Under the optimum conditions, the enrichment factors ranged from 162 to 194. The results showed that the 15 polyphenols had linear correlation coefficients (R2) more than 0.99. The limits of detection (LODs) were between 18.3 and 103.5 ng/g, and the average recoveries were between 96.9 and 116.3% with interday relative standard deviations (RSDs) ranging from 4.4 to 8.2% in all cases. The method was successfully applied to the analysis of real fruit juice samples and presented itself as a simple, rapid, practical, and environment-friendly technique.