A novel digitally optimized rapid quantification of carcinogenic aryl azo amines from various food matrices by HPTLC-MS

A rapid, precise and reproducible high-performance thin-layer chromatography-mass spectroscopy (HPTLC-MS) method was developed and validated for identification and quantification of toxic aryl azo amines from chili oils, pickles and related food matrices using Merck thin-layer chromatography (TLC) silica gel F-254 plates, as a stationary phase adsorbent by CAMAG HPTLC system. Extraction of azo food colors was done using method specified as per ISO standard. The use of tert-butyl-methyl ether as final extraction solvent resulted in minimal sample clean up and high efficiency. Calibration was performed to combat matrix effect. Good linearity levels were observed for the concentrations of aniline, 2, 4-xylidine and 4 aminoazobenzene of 2-14 ppm per band. The limits of detection and quantification found for aniline, 2,4-xylidine and 4-aminoazobenzene were found to be 0.0015, 200, and 400 ppm and limit of quantification (LOQ) values were found to be 0.004, 600, and 1200 ppm, respectively, with a correlation coefficient of 99.94 %. This study thus highlights an economically viable, commercially sustainable yet highly scientific technique of HPTLC-MS methodology with structural elucidation of banned azo amines in food and related products for their identification duly detectable at trace levels in a digitized form, which can enable material integrity-related prediction capacity of suspected food matrices.