Simultaneous Determination of Synthetic Colorants in Pickles and Sauerkrauts by HPLC-MS

synthetic colorants; pickles and sauerkrauts. Abstract:The Objective of this paper is to establish a method for determination of six synthetic colorants (sunset yellow, tartrazine, amaranth, carmine, allura red, brilliant blue)in pickles and sauerkrauts. The samples were adsorbed by polyamide then desorbed by aqueous alkali. After purified and extracted, the samples were detected by reverse phase liquid chromatography using mobile phase of methanol and acetic ammonium solution (the concentration is 0.02mol/L), mixture under gradient elution, confirmed and quantified by mass spectrum in the selected reaction monitoring (SRM) mode via positive electrospray ionization (ESI+).The results show that the method of sample testing had strong qualitative and quantitative ability. The curve of peak area with concentration was from 0.1 to 50 mg/L with correlation coefficients from 0.9990 to 0.9999. The detection limit of these six synthetic colorants was between 0.4 and 13 µg/kg. The recovery of the method was from 89.0 % to 101.2%, and the relative standard deviation (RSD) was between 0.5 % and 1.6%. The method developed is sensitive, simple, accurate and can be used to qualify and quantify this six synthetic colorants in pickles and sauerkrauts