Determination of synthetic dyes in bean and meat products by liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry

A sensitive and efficient method was developed for the simultaneous determination of eight synthetic dyes (Chrysoidin, Auramine O, Sudan(I-IV), Para Red, and Rhodamine B) in bean and meat products using high-performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry. A simple extraction procedure using acetonitrile has been applied for the extraction of these dyes from spiked bean and meat samples. Chromatographic separation was achieved on a Waters XTerra C-18 column (2.1 x 150 mm, 5 m) with a multistep gradient elution. Detection and quantification were performed using mass spectrometry in multiple reaction monitoring mode. Linear calibrations were obtained with correlation coefficients R-2 > 0.99. The limits of detection and quantification for the eight dyes were in the ranges of 0.03-0.75 and 0.1-2.0 g/kg depending on matrices, respectively. The recoveries of these dyes in different food matrices were between 71.2 and 116.9% with relative standard deviations <15.2%, suggesting that the developed method is promising for the accurate quantification of the eight dyes at trace levels in bean and meat products.