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Simultaneous Determination of Tocopherols, Phytosterols, and Squalene in Vegetable Oils by High Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

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Abstract

Vegetable oil is one of the principal sources of minor bioactive substances such as tocopherol, phytosterol, and squalene. In order to obtain the distribution of these substances in vegetable oil, this study developed and validated high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS) method for the simultaneous analysis of tocopherols (α-, β-, γ-, and δ-tocopherol), phytosterols (β-sitosterol, stigmasterol, brassicasterol, and campesterol), and squalene in vegetable oils. An automatic gel permeation chromatography (GPC) system was used to remove triglycerides from oils, avoiding the heat treatment of traditional saponification. Method validation revealed the accuracy and reliability of this method. The current approach achieved the successful separation of β- and γ-tocopherol, which solved the problem of coelution and inaccurate quantification for β- and γ-tocopherol in previous study. Additionally, this method was applied to detect tocopherols, phytosterols, and squalene in 9 categories of vegetable oils.

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Funding

The authors acknowledge the financial support from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC1600405) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (31760443).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Food Science and Technology, Nanchang University, No. 235 Nanjing East Road, Nanchang, 330047, Jiangxi, China

    Shanshan Liu, Huiyu Hu, Yanpeng Yu, Jiahui Zhao, Lichun Liu, Shanshan Zhao, Jianhua Xie, Chang Li & Mingyue Shen

  2. China-Canada Joint Lab of Food Science and Technology (Nanchang), Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330047, China

    Shanshan Liu, Huiyu Hu, Yanpeng Yu, Jiahui Zhao, Lichun Liu, Shanshan Zhao, Jianhua Xie, Chang Li & Mingyue Shen

Authors
  1. Shanshan Liu
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  2. Huiyu Hu
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  3. Yanpeng Yu
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  4. Jiahui Zhao
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  5. Lichun Liu
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  6. Shanshan Zhao
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  7. Jianhua Xie
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  8. Chang Li
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  9. Mingyue Shen
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Contributions

Shanshan Liu: Writing—original draft, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, visualization, data curation

Huiyu Hu: Methodology, data curation

Yanpeng Yu: Investigation, methodology, formal analysis

Jiahui Zhao: Writing—review and editing, software

Lichun Liu: Investigation, writing—review and editing

Shanshan Zhao: Writing—review and editing

Jianhua Xie: Resources, writing—review and editing

Chang Li: Conceptualization, validation

Mingyue Shen: Resources, investigation, writing—review and editing, validation, supervision

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mingyue Shen.

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This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects.

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Conflict of Interest

Shanshan Liu declares that there is no conflict of interest. Huiyu Hu declares that there is no conflict of interest. Yanpeng Yu declares that there is no conflict of interest. Jiahui Zhao declares that there is no conflict of interest. Lichun Liu declares that there is no conflict of interest. Shanshan Zhao declares that there is no conflict of interest. Jianhua Xie declares that there is no conflict of interest. Chang Li declares that there is no conflict of interest. Mingyue Shen declares that there is no conflict of interest.

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Highlights

• Simultaneous analysis of tocopherols, phytosterols, and squalene in vegetable oils was developed.

• Successful separation of β- and γ-tocopherol was achieved by this method.

• GPC treatment was a better technique than saponification.

• A wide variation of detected compounds in 9 types of oils was observed.

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Liu, S., Hu, H., Yu, Y. et al. Simultaneous Determination of Tocopherols, Phytosterols, and Squalene in Vegetable Oils by High Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry. Food Anal. Methods 14, 1567–1576 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12161-021-01987-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12161-021-01987-5

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