Characterization of seven sterols in five different types of cattle feedstuffs

This paper provides a method for the quantification of sterols in different types of calf feedstuffs based on soy, sunflower, hay, calf feed and a mixture of all of them. The free fraction and the total sterolic fraction, after saponification and acidic hydrolysis of the samples, are extracted by solvent and the sterols are identified/quantified by reversed phase HPLC coupled to tandem mass spectrometry by atmospheric pressure chemical ionization. After the recovery evaluation, the method is validated in terms of linearity (coefficient of determination R²), repeatability (coefficient of variation RSD), limit of detection and quantification. In most of the cases, the most representative phytosterol is β-sitosterol, followed by campesterol or stigmasterol and by other minor sterols such as fucosterol, and Δ-5-avenasterol. In addition, also cholesterol and ergosterol, if present, are evaluated in all the samples. As far as we know, very little information is available on the investigated feeds, which are commonly used on farms. The results of this survey were compared to other studies, if present in literature, showing good agreement. The proposed method resulted to be simple, fast and suitable for application to other sterols, feedstuffs and derived foods. The knowledge of the sterolic content and composition is getting more and more important, both in terms of comprehension of the vegetal biochemistry and as basis for sterolomic studies.