Application of Direct Analysis in Real Time (Part 3) Rapid Analysis of Fatty Acids in Rice Bran Using LCMS-2020

Introduction

The DART (direct analysis in real time) method can be used to directly ionize samples. Application News No. C109 describes an example of rapidly analyzing the lipids in foods without pretreatment. This article describes an example of analyzing the lipids in rice bran, which is known to involve an extremely tedious and time-consuming pretreatment process. Rice bran contains about 18 to 20 % oil, which is used as rice oil. A key characteristic of rice oil is its stability with respect to oxidation, due to its low content of linolenic acid, which is a polyunsaturated fatty acid. The rice germ portion of rice bran, which is known for its high nutritional value, contains high levels of rice oil. However, extracting it requires using hexane or other organic solvents and is time-consuming. Therefore, we evaluated the use of the DART method to analyze the lipids by simply exposing the rice bran to direct analysis, without involving solvent extraction or any other pretreatment process.

October 26, 2015 GMT