Determination of starch lysophospholipids in rice using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS)

Acquiring a complete understanding of rice starch lysophospholipids (LPLs), their biosynthetic pathways and genetic diversity, and the influence of genotype by environment interactions has been hampered by the lack of efficient high-throughput extraction and analysis methods. It was hypothesized a single-step aqueous n-propanol extraction combined with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) could be employed to analyze starch LPLs in white rice. The investigation found different grinding methods showed little effect on the final LPL detected, and a simple single-step extraction with 75% n-propanol (8 mL/0.15 g) heated at 100 °C for 2 h was as effective as an onerous multistep extraction method. A LC-MS method was optimized to simultaneously quantify 10 major LPLs in rice starch within 15 min. This method enables total and individual starch LPL analysis of a large number of rice samples at little cost. This approach could be applied to starch LPLs in other cereals.