Simultaneous determination of the content of 6 non nutritive sweeteners in soy sauce by UPLC-MS/MS

A detection method was established for the simultaneous determination of the content of 6 non nutritive sweeteners (sodium saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame, sucralose, neotame and edevant) in soy sauce using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS). The samples were salted out by sodium chloride, ultrasonic extracted by 0.1% formic acid acetonitrile solution, purified by octadecylsilane chemically bonded silica (C18) adsorbent, eluted by gradient with methanol -0.1% formic acid aqueous solution as mobile phase, and determined by external standard method of matrix matching standard curve under the mode of simultaneous scanning of positive and negative ions of electrospray ionization (ESI) source and selected reaction monitoring (SRM). The results showed that the linear relationship of 6 non nutritive sweeteners in their respective ranges was good, the correlation coefficient R² was above 0.996, the limit of detection (LOD) was 0.6-60 μg/kg, the limit of quantitation was 2-200 μg/kg, and the recovery rate was 90.1%-104.9%. The relative standard deviation (RSD) of the precision test results ranged from 1.14% to 6.11%. This method was simple and quick, with high sensitivity, good precision and accuracy, which was suitable for the detection of 6 non-nutritive sweeteners in soy sauce.