High-performance liquid chromatography for the sensitive zearalenone determination by the automated immunomagnetic beads purifier for one-step sample pre-treatment

In this study, a sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography method for zearalenone determination in feeds and grains was established based on the automatic immunomagnetic bead purifier analyzer (KY-AMI-I) for the one-step sample pre-treatment. Various parameters that may affect the analytical performance were investigated. Immunomagnetic bead separation system based on a monoclonal antibody (anti-ZEN antibody-immunomagnetic beads conjugation) was individually prepared for the ZEN purification. Besides, the average recoveries in spiked samples ranged from 75.23 to 102.62%, and the relative standard deviations were between 3.55 and 8.07% (< 10%). The method was used to analyze naturally contaminated positive feedstuff, and the results obtained by this method was in a good agreement with data obtained by immunoaffinity column-high-performance liquid chromatography (IAC-HPLC–FLD). The conformity and correlation of two methods was satisfactory. The comprehensive results showed that the proposed method was shown to be a suitable method for ZEN determination.