In-House Fabricated One-Step SPE Cartridge with HPLC-MS/MS for Fast and Accurate Determination of Multi-Class Contaminants in Eggs

Eggs are highly susceptible to simultaneous contamination by veterinary drugs, pesticides and mycotoxins across the entire laying hen production chain, yet the quantitative analysis of these multi-class contaminants with a wide polarity span in egg matrices remains challenging. In this work, an in-house fabricated one-step SPE cartridge coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry was established for their simultaneous, accurate and sensitive quantification. Response surface methodology was adopted to optimize the sorbent composition of the self-made cartridge. All target analytes achieved correlation coefficients (R2) higher than 0.99 over their respective linear ranges. The limits of detection and limits of quantification (LOQs) spanned 0.1–3 μg/kg and 0.2–10 μg/kg, respectively. Matrix effect (ME) assessment revealed weak ME for 60% of the compounds. At three fortification levels (LOQ, 2× LOQ and 10× LOQ), recoveries of all 60 analytes fell within 70–120%, with relative standard deviations lower than 20%. The above results confirm that the proposed method can simultaneously quantify veterinary drugs, pesticides and mycotoxins; greatly shorten sample pretreatment duration; and markedly improve overall analytical efficiency.