Optimisation of ion trap parameters for the quantification of chlormequat by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry and the application in the analysis of pear extracts

Abstract

Optimisation of the activation parameters for ion trap mass spectrometric analysis of the chlormequat cation using simplex optimisation enabled the product ion (m/z 58) response to be improved 1000-fold. A comparison of the sensitivity of the optimised ion trap mass spectrometer with that of a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer for liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) showed that similar limits of detection (LODs) could be achieved. For the MS/MS transition of the (35)Cl precursor to the most abundant product, LODs were 0.8 ng cation mL(-1) (0.004 mg cation kg(-1) pear equivalent) and 1.0 ng cation mL(-1) (0.005 mg cation kg(-1) pear equivalent) on the triple quadrupole and ion trap instrument, respectively.

Liquid Chromatography-Ion Trap-Mass Spectrometry and its Application to Determine Organic Contaminants in the Environment and Food

“…Different quantitative analytical methods for acidic, neutral, and cationic pesticides have been developed based on LC-QIT-MS [35,41,43] or in MS-MS in the multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode by using extracted ion chromatograms [36,48,50,76,77,86].…”

“…Most of the applications dealt with the determination of chlormequat in food samples with LC/MS coupled with an ES source [47,[75][76][77]116]. For chlormequat, the fragmentation of the molecular ion [Cat] + (m/z 122) provides, as main products, the ions at m/z 58 and 59 ([Cat-ClC 2 H 5 ] + and [CatClC 2 H 4 ] + Ÿ ) produced by the loss of the chloroethyl moiety.…”

“…On the contrary, Evans et al [76] who compared the performance of both, reported very similar LODs and indicated that both offer a sensitivity and precision that are potentially suitable for the routine analysis of chlormequat. A reason could be, as the last authors stated, that access to advanced control software of the QIT is essential to enhance sensitivity.…”

Iterative Optimization of an ESI IT Mass Spectrometer Using Regular Simplex and a Multivariate Target Function Representing the S/N Ratio

“…This feature makes these methods particularly interesting for automatic tuning: if tuning needs to be stopped, the procedure provides the best experimental conditions obtained at that moment, which are usually better experimental settings than the the starting ones. The simplex optimization procedure has already been widely applied both to mass spectrometry and other analytical procedures [7,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”

Chlormequat Selective Electrodes: Construction, Evaluation and Application at Fia Systems

“…Due to the overall complexity of the relevant sample matrices, as well as the low concentrations expected in contaminated samples, almost all methods require a detection system capable of producing both quantitative and qualitative information. For this reason mass spectrometry is nearly the only detec-tion system proposed in the literature, and may be associated with liquid chromatogra-phy [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], thin layer chromatography [14] and electrophoresis systems [15,16]. Independently of the separation approach, the use of mass spectrometry is connected to high capital investment, which makes it unsuitable for routine applications.…”