Simultaneous determination of 24 sulfonamide residues in meat by ultra-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry

The present study used the liquid extraction pretreatment method and developed an ultra-performance liquid chromatography triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) for the simultaneous determination of 24 kinds of sulfonamide residues in meat. The meat samples were homogenized, extracted and deproteinized by acetonitrile, defatted by n-hexane, and further liquid–liquid extracted by ethyl acetate. All of 24 sulfonamide residues were simultaneously separated and determined by UPLC-MS/MS within 15 min. The sulfonamide residues were monitored via the ESI+ ionization method and quantified by six-channel multiple reaction monitoring (MRM). The calibrations were performed in sample matrixes by the isotope dilution method and the interference effect of sample matrixes on the ionization was effectively eliminated. Good linear relationship (R2 = 0.991–0.999) was observed within the concentration range of 0.2–50 μg/kg. Satisfied recoveries (67.8–113.9%) of all the sulfonamides were demonstrated in different standard-spiked levels except sulfanitran (SNT). The analytical category, separation speed, selectivity, sensitivity and repeatability of sulfonamides using UPLC-MS/MS were significantly improved compared to other analytical methods. Quantitative results of 240 meat samples demonstrated that the present method has a convenient operation and good practicability, which can be applied to the quantitative analysis of a large number of samples.