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Development of an analytical method for the determination of sterol compounds in boars' saliva
Petr Doležal1, Kamila Pokorná2, Jaroslav Čítek2
1Department of Agro-Environmental Chemistry and Plant Nutrition, Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, 165 00 Praha - Suchdol, Czech Republic; Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, 165 00 Praha - Suchdol, Czech Republic.
Abstract:
"Boar taint" compounds influence the sexual behavioral responses of sows and stimulate their reproduction. This paper reports a fast, easier, and a non-invasive analytical method for the analysis of three "boar taint" compounds in boar' saliva samples: androstenone, androsten-3α-ol, and androsten-3β-ol. This method was developed and validated based on solid-phase extraction (SPE) and multidimensional gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (MDGC-MS). All the compounds were detected without derivatization. This method affords good reproducibility (4%-8%), accuracy (80%-105%), precision (5.5%-9.1%), linearity (R2 = 0.98-0.99), and lower limits of quantitation (LLOQ) (0.1-0.2 μg/L). Although the presence of these compounds in saliva has been known for a long time, no simple and easy analytical method has been developed.
