Determination of Sulfonamide and Quinolone Residues in Infant Formula Milk Powder by Ultra-Performance Liquid Chromatography Tandem Triple Quadrupole Mass Spectrometry

An analytical method was established for the determination of the residues of 11 sulfonamides and five quinolones in infant formula milk powder using ultra-performance liquid chromatography tandem triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS). Acidified acetonitrile was used for sample extraction and the extract was purified and concentrated by solid phase extraction (SPE) using a PRiME hydrophilic lipophilic balance (HLB) column, then separated on an XBridge BEH C₁₈ column, detected in the positive ion mode using an electrospray ionization source, and quantified by the calibration curve method with matrix matching. The calibration curves of all analytes showed a good linear relationship in the concentration range of 2–100 ng/mL with correlation coefficients greater than 0.9950. The limit of detection (LOD) and the limit of quantification (LOQ) were 0.1-0.2 and 0.3-0.5 μg/kg, respectively. Recoveries for spiked samples were between 84.8% and 108.0%, with relative standard deviations (RSDs) between 0.36% and 5.41%. The proposed method is simple, efficient, reliable and sensitive.