Simultaneous Determination of 15 Plant Growth Regulators in Bean Sprout and Tomato with Liquid Chromatography–Triple Quadrupole Tandem Mass Spectrometry

The present paper describes the development and validation of a new reversed-phase liquid chromatography–electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometric method for determination of 15 plant growth regulators in bean sprout and tomato. Plant growth regulators were extracted with mixed solvents methanol/acetonitrile/water/acetic acid (v/v/v/v, 40/40/20/1) from 10 g vegetable and analyzed directly without further cleanup. The identification of each analyte was established by chromatographic retention time, analyte-specific fragmentation patterns, and relative peak area ratios of precursor/product ion pairs. The recoveries of 15 plant growth regulators in bean sprout and tomato were 70.3–110.0 %. The repeatability of this method is excellent, and relative standard deviation value is less than 10 %.