Determination of plant growth regulators in pears by microwave-assisted extraction and liquid chromatography with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry

A new method for the determination of six plant growth regulators, 3-indolylacetic acid, 3-indolepropionic acid, 2-naphthoxyacetic acid, 2,4-dicholrophenoxyacetic acid, 1-naphthlcetic acid, and methyl naphthalene-1-acetate, in pears was established by liquid chromatography with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. In this study, a microwave-assisted extraction technique was first applied for the determination of plant growth regulators in fruit and three cleanup techniques were, respectively, investigated for the purification of pear samples. The chromatographic separation was performed on a Diamonsil C-18 column by using 0.01 mol/L formic acid/ammonium formate buffer solution (pH 3.5)/methanol (35:65, v/v) as the mobile phase with a flow rate of 0.7 mL/min in 1:1 split mode. The LODs ranged from 0.3 to 1.9 mu g/kg. Under optimized conditions, the average recoveries (five replicates) for six plant growth regulators (spiked at 0.01, 0.05, and 0.5 mg/kg) ranged from 78.9 to 118.0%, and the RSDs were 1.4-10.3%.