Simultaneous determination of fumonisins B1, B2 and B3 contaminants in maize by ultra high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry

The present work developed an analytical method for simultaneous determination of fumonisins B1, B2 and B3 residues in maize by ultra high-performance liquid chromatography combined with electrospray ionization triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC–MS/MS) under the multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode, and especially focused on the optimization of extraction, clean-up, UHPLC separation and MS/MS parameters. The method involves addition of fumonisins isotope internal standards, extraction with a mixture of acetonitrile and water and clean-up with solid-phase extraction (SPE) cartridges before UHPLC–MS/MS analysis. A single-laboratory method validation was conducted by testing three different spiking levels for repeatability and recovery according to International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) guidelines. The LOQ of FB1, FB2 and FB3 were 1.50, 1.65 and 0.4 μg kg−1, respectively, which were lower than the criteria of EU, USA and other countries regarding minimum residue limits of fumonisins in foods including baby foods and feedstuffs. Recoveries of three fumonisins ranged from 80.9% to 97.0% with RSD values of 2.4–11.1%.The advantages of this method include simple pretreatment, rapid determination and high sensitivity, and it fulfills the requirements for food analysis with respect to minimum residue limits of fumonisins in various countries.