BACKGROUND

Atropine (Atr) and scopolamine (Scp) are toxic secondary plant metabolites of species within the Solanaceae genus that can accidentally or intentionally reach the food store chain by inaccurate harvesting of any plant material, e.g. for herbal tea infusions. Ingestion may cause severe anticholinergic poisoning thus requiring risk-oriented determination in food and beverages. The suitability of matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (tandem) mass spectrometry, MALDI-TOF MS(/MS), should be characterized for simultaneous analysis.

METHODS

We herein present the first MALDI-TOF MS(/MS) procedure for quantitative determination of both alkaloids in herbal tea infusions and Solanaceae plant material. A standard additions procedure using triply deuterated Atr as internal standard was developed and validated.

RESULTS

Tropane alkaloids were detected without interferences and the standard additions procedure allowed reliable quantification. Intraday and interday precision were less than 17% and corresponding accuracies were between 77% and 112%. Limits of detection in the spotting solution were found at 5 ng/mL (Atr) and 0.5 ng/mL (Scp). The assay was applied to diverse tea infusions as well as to berries and leaves of deadly nightshade and angel's trumpet.

CONCLUSIONS

The usefulness of MALDI-TOF MS(/MS) for investigations of plant-derived samples to prove contaminations by small basic compounds was demonstrated. The elaborate procedure is reliable but quite laborious to obtain quantitative results, but MALDI-TOF MS(/MS) was also shown to be a valuable tool for rapid qualitative screening for Atr and Scp in plant extracts.