In-House Fabricated One-Step SPE Cartridge with HPLC-MS/MS for Fast and Accurate Determination of Multi-Class...

Eggs are highly susceptible to simultaneous contamination by veterinary drugs, pesticides and mycotoxins across the entire laying hen production chain, yet the quantitative analysis of these multi-class contaminants with a wide polarity span in egg matrices remains challenging. In this work, an in-house fabricated one-step SPE cartridge coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry was established for their simultaneous, accurate and sensitive quantification. Response surface methodology was adopted to optimize the sorbent composition of the self-made cartridge. All target analytes achieved correlation coefficients (R²) higher than 0.99 over their respective linear ranges. The limits of detection and limits of quantification (LOQs) spanned 0.1-3 μg/kg and 0.2-10 μg/kg, respectively. Matrix effect (ME) assessment revealed weak ME for 60% of the compounds. At three fortification levels (LOQ, 2× LOQ and 10× LOQ), recoveries of all 60 analytes fell within 70-120%, with relative standard deviations lower than 20%. The above results confirm that the proposed method can simultaneously quantify veterinary drugs, pesticides and mycotoxins; greatly shorten sample pretreatment duration; and markedly improve overall analytical efficiency.