Anthocyanins profile as fingerprint of wines using atmospheric pressure photoionisation coupled to quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry Original Research Article

Present work shows for the first time the suitability of the atmospheric pressure photoionisation (APPI) coupled to quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (QqTOF) to characterise anthocyanins in wines. Results obtained are satisfactorily compared with the electrospray ionisation (ESI-MS) that has also been used. Parameters concerning the direct infusion-APPI-MS have been studied and optimised to generate information-rich mass spectra for wine fingerprinting. The proposed analytical methodology has been used to obtain a classification rule for unknown samples according to their anthocyanins profiles. In addition, the procedure shows high sample throughput since the time consuming sample treatment required for the extraction of anthocyanins from wines has been drastically reduced in this fingerprint-targeted approach.