A new effective method was developed to determine the concentration of arbutin in pear peels using a modified QuEChERS (Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged, and Safe) method and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The original QuEChERS was modified to enable the extraction of the polar arbutin molecule. Use of an initial 50:50 acetonitrile:water extraction solvent led to the highest extraction efficiency. The arbutin extracted from pear peels was found to be identical to the β-arbutin standard, as confirmed by NMR and LC-MS/MS analyses. For quantitative analysis, the mass spectra of the precursor ion [M+NH4]+ at m/z 290.0 and the product ion of arbutin at m/z 163.0 were used. The limit of detection, limit of quantification, linearity, precision, accuracy, and recovery of the proposed method were evaluated. We successfully applied this method to pear samples and it may be suitable for the quantitative analysis of arbutin in other similar plant materials.
Keywords: LC-MS/MS; QuEChERS; arbutin; pear peels; quantitative analysis.