Rapid method for the simultaneous detection of boar taint compounds by means of solid phase microextraction coupled to gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

• Fast extraction of boar taint compounds from adipose tissue by SPME.
• Optimized and validated HS-SPME-GC–MS method.
• Cross-validation with an in-laboratory UHPLC-HR-Orbitrap-MS method.

Because of animal welfare issues, the voluntary ban on surgical castration of male piglets, starting January 2018 was announced in a European Treaty. One viable alternative is the fattening of entire male pigs. However, this can cause negative consumer reactions due to the occurrence of boar taint and possibly lead to severe economic losses in pig husbandry. In this study, headspace solid phase microextraction (HS-SPME) coupled to GC–MS was used in the development and optimization of a candidate method for fast and accurate detection of the boar taint compounds. Remarkably fast extraction (45 s) of the boar taint compounds from adipose tissue was achieved by singeing the fat with a soldering iron while released volatiles were extracted in-situ using HS-SPME. The obtained method showed good performance characteristics after validation according to CD 2002/657/EC and ISO/IEC 17025 guidelines. Moreover, cross-validation with an in-house UHPLC-HR-Orbitrap-MS method showed good agreement between an in-laboratory method and the new candidate method for the fast extraction and detection of skatole and androstenone, which emphasizes the accuracy of this new SPME-GC–MS method. Threshold detection of the boar taint compounds on a portable GC–MS could not be achieved. However, despite the lack of sensitivity obtained on the latter instrument, a very fast method with run-to-run time of 3.5 min for the detection of the boar taint compounds was developed.