The identification and quantification of biogenic amines in Korean turbid rice wine, Makgeolli by HPLC with mass spectrometry detection

•Development of 9 biogenic amines in Makgeolli by a new UHPLC-MS/MS.•Method of validation provides suitable linearity, precision and high sensitivity.•Occurrence of biogenic amines in Makgeolli collected from Korea market.•This method was appropriated for determining biogenic amines in fermented food matrices.

A rapid and reliable method for the simultaneous determination of 9 biogenic amines (BAs; agmatine, phenylethylamine, tyramine, putrescine, cadaverine, histamine, tryptamine, spermidine, and spermine) in Korean turbid rice wine, Makgeolli, was optimized and validated using ultra-high-pressure liquid chromatography-electrospray tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-ESI-MS/MS). This method involves pre-treatment with Makgeolli to remove proteins and a pre-column dansylation of the BAs. The BAs were separated on a C18 column under an LC gradient and were detected by MS/MS using the multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. The calibration curve of the proposed method was linear in the range of 0.5-500 ng/mL with a correlation value (r2) greater than 0.9683. The limits of detection (LODs) for the BAs were 0.1-4.6 ng/mL. Intra-day and inter-day relative standard deviations (RSDs) were <14.9% and <14.5%, respectively. This proposed method has been applied to the quantitative determination of all of the analytes, with recoveries of 83.0-108.7% for the Makgeolli samples. The established method was sufficient to determine the 9 BAs in Makgeolli samples. As a result, this method was successfully applied to the sensitive determination of tyramine, phenylethylamine, putrescine, cadaverine, histamine, tryptamine, spermidine, and spermine in Makgeolli samples.