Determination of chloramphenicol residue in royal jelly by high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry

After using C18 SPE cartridge to clean up the royal jelly sample, a high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC/MS/MS) was developed for determination of chloramphenicol (CAP) residue in royal jelly. Analytical identification and quantification were performed using multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) and electrospray ionization in negative mode. The analytical conditions of extraction and clean-up and all the parameter of instrument were optimized. Under the optimal conditions, the RSD of this method was good and lower than 10% when the residue amount of CAP was between (0.1-0.3) × 10^-9. The detection limits of this method were 0.1 × 10^-9 and the correlation coefficients of linear regression equations were 0.9998. The recoveries were 90%-110% when the residue amount of CAP was between (0.1-0.3) × 10^-9. This method was suitable for determining low CAP residue in royal jelly.