Development and application of a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method for the determination of sugars and organics acids in araza, ceriguela, guava, mango and pitanga

The intrinsic characteristics of many tropical fruits cause high post-harvest losses and prevent their commercialization as fresh fruits. Information about their composition is crucial for defining processing conditions and identifying opportunities for product development. However, the analytical methods generally used to quantify sugars and organic acids are costly and time-consuming. Simultaneous analysis by Liquid Chromatography-Electrospray Ionization-Mass Spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS/MS) is a very sensitive and reproducible technique, allowing for accurate simultaneous multianalyte quantitation in complex systems. Thus, a LC-ESI-MS/MS Multiple Reaction Monitoring (MRM) method was developed using reverse phase column for detecting and quantifying sugars and some organic acids in only 4 min, in selected fruits as following: araza (Psidium cattleianum L.), ciriguela (Spondias purpurea L.), mango (Mangifera indica L.), guava (Psidium guajava L.) and pitanga (Eugenia uniflora L.). All fruits had a similar concentration of glucose and fructose, except for pitanga that presented higher values of both. The content of citric, malic and tartaric acids was quantitated; some fruits stood out by their high content of organic acids, for instance, araza was rich in citric acid. The newly generated data on the composition of tropical fruits allowed establishing a correlation between the carbohydrate content and the physical properties of the fruit pulps, assist in product development.