Rapid quantification of sucrose esters in oriental tobacco by liquid chromatography-ion trap mass spectrometry

A rapid and sensitive LC-MS/MS method was developed for the quantitative determination of sucrose esters (SEs) in Oriental tobacco samples. The sample preparation involved a 10-min sonication extraction procedure with acetone and five-fold dilution of the extract with methanol. The experiment was carried out in positive ion mode by ESI IT mass spectrometer. Because of lack of authentic standards of SEs, sucrose octa-acetate (internal standard, IS) was used as a surrogate to validate the proposed method. Matrix-matched standard calibration was used for quantification of IS in the spiked samples. Under optimized MS/MS conditions, an LOQ of 3.9 microg/g was achieved for IS, with an LOD of about 1.2 microg/g. Recoveries for IS were 95-97%. Among 19 monitored SEs, the contents of 11 SEs had RSDs lower than 13.7%. The method, with very little sample handling and good sensitivity, was applied to the rapid quantification of SEs in four Oriental tobacco samples. It appears that the sum of contents of the five SEs with MW 650, 664, and 678 Da occupied approximately 80% of the total content of SEs.