High Sensitivity Analysis of Acrylamide in Potato Chips by LC/MS/MS with Modified QuEChERS Sample Pre-treatment Procedure

The QuEChERS procedure was modified by adding a step and additional 4 grams of anhydrous MgSO4 in the extraction steps to obtain clear upper layer (organic). This was found to be critical because with a standard procedure recommended the aqueous phase could not be removed completely and layer separation was not clear and difficult. A LC/MS/MS method was developed for quantitation of acrylamide based on the optimized MRM transitions of acrylamide in positive mode, using m/z72.1>55.0 for quantitation and m/z72.1>27.1 for confirmation. A small injection volume of 1.0 uL was employed in all experiments of the method to reduce sample contamination and interface maintenance. A linear calibration curve of acrylamide in potato chip matrix solutions (post-spiked) was established using acrylamide-d3 (m/z75.1>58.0) as internal standard. Good linearity with a correlation coefficient (R2) of 0.999 was obtained crossing the calibration range of 1 - 500 ng/mL. The method performance was evaluated with spiked samples. The recovery, matrix effect and process efficiency of the method at 50 ng/mL level were determined to be 105.28%, 107.71% and 104.76%, respectively. The repeatability (RSD%, n=6) of peak area for 5ng/mL and 50ng/mL spiked samples was 4.2 and 4.8%, respectively. Acrylamide was detected in a potato chip sample bought from local supermarket. The content of acrylamide determined was 135.2 ug/kg and 133.3 ug/kg in duplicate sample preparations.