Determination of the Main Ergot Alkaloids and Their Epimers in Oat-Based Functional Foods by Ultra-High Performance Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry Carbonell Rozas, Laura Gámiz Gracia, Laura Lara Vargas, Francisco Jesús García Campaña, Ana María Ergot alkaloids Oats Food supplements QuEChERS UHPLC-MS/MS An ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry method is proposed for the determination of the major ergot alkaloids (ergometrine, ergosine, ergotamine, ergocornine, ergokryptine, ergocristine) and their epimers (ergometrinine, ergosinine, ergotaminine, ergocorninine, ergokryptinine, and ergocristinine) in oat-based foods and food supplements. A modified QuEChERS (quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe) procedure was applied as sample treatment, reducing the consumption of organic solvent and increasing sensitivity. This method involved an extraction with acetonitrile and ammonium carbonate (85:15, v/v) and a clean-up step based on dispersive solid-phase extraction, employing a mixture of C18/Z-Sep+ as sorbents. Procedural calibration curves were established and limits of quantification were below 3.2 µg/kg for the studied compounds. Repeatability and intermediate precision (expressed as RSD%) were lower than 6.3% and 15%, respectively, with recoveries ranging between 89.7% and 109%. The method was applied to oat-based products (bran, flakes, flour, grass, hydroalcoholic extracts, juices, and tablets), finding a positive sample of oat bran contaminated with ergometrine, ergosine, ergometrinine, and ergosinine (total content of 10.7 µg/kg). 2021-07-06T11:50:37Z 2021-07-06T11:50:37Z 2021 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Carbonell-Rozas, L.; Gámiz-Gracia, L.; Lara, F.J.; García-Campaña, A.M. Determination of the Main Ergot Alkaloids and Their Epimers in Oat-Based Functional Foods by Ultra-High Performance Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry. Molecules 2021, 26, 3717. https://doi.org/10.3390/ molecules26123717 http://hdl.handle.net/10481/69562 10.3390/molecules26123717 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España MDPI