Rapid determination of chloramphenicol in soft-shelled turtle tissues using on-line MSPD-HPLC–MS/MS

In this work, an analytical protocol based on on-line matrix solid-phase dispersion (MSPD) ultra-fast LC–MS/MS was successfully established, for rapid determination of chloramphenicol (CAP) present in soft-shelled turtle tissues. Trace level of CAP was analysed and separated on a core-shell C18 silica column in 2 min. The performance of the on-line MSPD-LC–MS/MS method was evaluated using multi-reaction monitoring (MRM) quantification mode. The calibration curve was linear over the range of 0.01–100 ng mL−1. The mean values of relative standard deviation of intra- and inter-day ranging from 2.05% to 8.33% and from 3.05% to 10.17% were obtained, respectively. In the four fortified levels (1, 5, 7.5 and 10 ng), recoveries of CAP ranged from 92.05% to 98.07% with RSDs ⩽ 4.20%. The proposed method has been applied successfully to the analysis of CAP in soft-shelled turtle tissue sample, which demonstrates that this new instrumental coupling is ultra-fast, sensitive, reliable and environmental friendly.