Determination of saccharides in honey using supercritical fluid chromatography coupled with single quadrupole mass spectrometry

The efficient separation and accurate determination of saccharides still remains a challenge due to the wide variety of possible isomers, high polarity, similar chemical composition and absence of chromophores [1]. Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) is an attractive separation method often showing higher resolution and shorter analysis time compared to traditional GC and HPLC [2]. Few papers have reported on the SFC analysis of saccharides using standard compounds [3-4]. The aim of this study was to develop an efficient and sensitive method for the determination of fructose, glucose and sucrose in honey samples using SFC-MS. The method validation and application to the determination of these saccharides in different honey samples were also performed.