Chemical characterization of eight herbal liqueurs by means of liquid chromatography coupled with ion mobility quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry

• Published in: Journal of Chromatography A Vol. 1631; p. 461560
• Main Authors: Montero, Lidia, Schmitz, Oliver J., Meckelmann, Sven W.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 08.11.2020
• Subjects: Herb; Herbal liqueur; Ion mobility mass spectrometry; Phenolic compound; Polyphenol; Polyphenol; Ion mobility mass spectrometry; Phenolic compound; Herbal liqueur; Herb
• ISSN: 0021-9673
• DOI: 10.1016/j.chroma.2020.461560

•A LC ion mobility method with high resolution mass spectrometry is presented for the analysis of herbal liqueurs.•171 compounds were identified in the samples by tandem mass spectrometry and collision cross section (CCS).•Isobaric phenolic compounds were separated by ion mobility.•The profile of known compounds allowing to distinguish between different herbal liqueurs. Herbal liqueurs are a large group of diverse alcoholic beverages with an ancient tradition produced by maceration of various herbs and spices and are commonly drunken before or after a meal to aid in the digestion because of their potential functional properties. In the presented work, eight different commercial herbal liqueurs were investigated with regard to their composition of phenolic compounds by liquid chromatography ion mobility quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-IM-QTOF-MS). This multidimensional analytical platform uses all-ion fragmentation for a deep coverage of the foodome. After an extensive data clean-up, 3225 features were found. 213 features were manually annotated due to the absence of databases and software tools able to consider the drift time or Collison Cross Section (CCS) together with high resolution MS/MS spectra for identification. The identified compounds reflected the large variance between the investigated samples and a wealth of potential bioactive compounds that these liqueurs harbor.