Determination of Carboxylic Acids from Plant Root Exudates by Ion Exclusion Chromatography with ESI-MS

Ion-exclusion chromatography (IEC) coupled with electrospray ionization quadrupole mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) has been used for the analysis of carboxylic acids. The use of ESI-MS provides increased specificity and sensitivity compared to existing detection methods. This paper applies IEC-ESI-MS to the analysis of carboxylic acids in commonly found root exudates and shows that the separation of nine carboxylic acids (pyruvic, oxalic, lactic, malonic, maleic, succinic, tartaric, aconitic and citric acids) can be achieved by IEC within 8 min. The ESI provided reasonable signals from negative ions, [M−H]⁻ in the negative ionization mode. Linear plots of peak area versus concentration were obtained in the range 50–25,000 μg L⁻¹ for MS detection under optimized MS conditions. The detection limits of target organic acids, based upon signal to noise ratio (S/N = 3), ranged from 10 to 30 μg L⁻¹. The reproducibility of peak areas was <2.5% (n = 5). The proposed method was used for the confirmation and quantification of carboxylic acids in nutrient solutions containing root exudates.