A Novel LC-MS Method for Direct Analysis of Mid-Long Chain Free Fatty Acids

User Benefits

- A direct LC-MS method was established for the separation and quantitation of free fatty acids on LCMS-2050. - A phenyl column was adopted for effective separation of eleven representative mid-long chain free fatty acids, i.e., saturated fatty acid (SFA), monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA) and poly-unsaturated fatty acid (PUFA).

Introduction

The determination of composition of free fatty acids (FFAs) in food plays an important role in quality control. FFAs are naturally present in many raw ingredients, such as cocoa beans and milk, but high levels of them are responsible for rancidity and unacceptable for sale or consumption. While extensive researches have been carried out to analyse FFAs on GC-FID and GC-MS, LC- MS offers an advantage over GC method in that FFAs can be analysed directly without an additional derivatisation step. Most LC-MS analyses published are performed on LC-MS/MS with C18 column. However, many FFAs are not fragmented steadily to give high MRM sensitivity due to the nature of the stable structures. In this application news, we present a SIM mode method to analyse eleven representative mid-long chain free fatty acids, i.e., saturated fatty acid (SFA), monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA) and poly- unsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) using a phenyl column on LCMS-2050.

September 29, 2022 GMT