Rapid determination of nosiheptide in feed based on dispersive SPE coupled with HPLC

A novel, simple, and reliable method based on high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with fluorescence detection has been developed for the determination of nosiheptide in feed. The feed samples were extracted with acetonitrile 0.1% formic acid aqueous solution and then purified via a dispersive solid-phase extraction procedure using silica gel powder as the sorbent. Using a mixture of acetonitrile and 5 mM ammonium acetate solution (containing 0.1% formic acid) as the mobile phase, good separation and peak shape were obtained for nosiheptide on a Poroshell C₈ column (250 × 4.6 mm id, 4 μm) via the isocratic elution program. The resulting calibration curve shows high levels of linearity (r²  > 0.999) for nosiheptide concentrations of 50-1000 μg/L. At three spiked levels, i.e., 0.500, 2.50 and 5.00 mg/kg, the intra- and interday recoveries of nosiheptide in five types of feed ranged from 78.5-96.8 and 84.9-94.2%, respectively. The intra- and interday relative standard deviations were less than 10.8%. The limits of quantification for nosiheptide in complete feed and premixes were measured as 50 and 100 μg/kg, respectively. Compared with other common adsorbents, silica gel presents stronger recovery and purification results for feed samples during the dispersive solid-phase extraction process.