Abstract:A fast and sensitive method for the simultaneous determination of 11 industrial dyes (auramine O, basic yellow, basic orange 21, basic orange 22, basic orange 2, rhodamine B, rhodamine 6G, Sudan red I~IV) in condiments was successfully established with QuEChERS (quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe)-based purification and liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (internal standard method). The industrial dyes were extracted with acetonitrile and further purified with QuEChERS method using C18 and primary-secondary amine (PSA) to reduce the matrix interference. Subsequently, the sample was analyzed by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry under multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode, and the internal standard method was used for quantitative analysis. The results showed that the method had a good linearity in the range of 0.5~100 μg/L (R2=0.9976), and the limits of detection (LODs) were in the range of 0.01~0.4 μg/kg. The average recoveries of industrial dyes from spiked condiments ranged from 70.7 to 105.0%, and the relative standard deviations were between 0.1 and 9.3%. This method was applied to analyze 50 batches of condiment samples, and different concentrations of rhodamine B were found in four of them. The results indicated that the developed method was fast and accurate, and could be applied for the detection of residues of 11 industrial dyes illegally added in the condiments.
