Carbendazim Contamination in Orange Juice

Carbendazin Contamination in Orange Juice

Mass Spectrometry Applications

Food producers, importers, and regulators must continuously stay alert to the potential of finding various contaminants in food products and ingredients. As an example of this, concerns have emerged in early 2012 surrounding contaminated orange juice imported into the United States, with juice samples testing positive for the fungicide Carbendazim.

LC-MS/MS provides food producers, importers, regulators, and testing labs like yours the capability to identify contaminants such as Carbendazim in food samples immediately when a concern emerges, and also offers the most sensitive, robust, and reliable methodology to routinely screen and then quantititate contaminants in order to guard consumers, meet regulations, and protect brands from unsuspected contaminants.

The AB SCIEX / Phenomenex Rapid Response Unit provides you with complete solutions, from sample clean-up to LC-MS/MS conditions, for your lab to start testing for Carbendazim in orange juice.  Read-on below for more details, and for more information, contact us at rapidresponse@phenomenex.com.

Rapid, accurate, sensitive detection of fungicides in juice

LC-MS/MS with library searching allows the most reliable approach to identifying unknown contaminants in food samples. For suspect orange juice, samples may be diluted (5x), directly injected into the LC-MS/MS system, and chromatograms analyzed against a library of contaminants for accurate contaminant identification.

And, if you're looking for additional sample prep solutions to achieve even lower limits of detection, look no further.  Read-on for optimized sample preparation and SPE clean-up conditions for the extraction of Carbendazim in orange juice.


Figure 1: Store-bought orange juice sample diluted 5x and directly injected and analyzed by LC-MS/MS.

Store-bought orange juice sample diluted 5x and directly injected and analyzed by LC-MS/MS.


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Figure 2: Our software solutions offer automatic MRM ratio calculation and verification through MS/MS library searching.

Carbendazim in orange juice


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Figure 3: One unique MRM transition for Carbendazim provides sensitivity for quantification of the compound to as low as 0.1 ng/mL.

One unique MRM transition for Carbendazim provides sensitivity for quantification of the compound to as low as 0.1 ng/mL.


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Figure 4: Both MRM transitions for Carbendazim show excellent linearity from 0.05 ng/mL to 100 ng/mL, with correlation coefficients of 0.999 for the linear regression fits.

One unique MRM transition for Carbendazim provides sensitivity for detection of the compound to as low as 0.05 ng/mL.


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Optimized solid-phase extraction conditions: Here are some starting conditions for sample preparation of orange juice that includes additional sample clean-up.

Solid-phase extraction cartridge - Strata-X-C 60 mg/3 mL (Phenomenex P/N 8B-S029-UBJ)

Sample prep with clean-up procedure:

  1. Dilute 1 mL of orange juice sample with 2 mL of 0.1 N HCl.  Vortex, centrifuge, and collect supernatent.
  2. Condition SPE cartridge with 1 mL Methanol.
  3. Equilibrate SPE cartridge with 1 mL 0.1 N HCl.
  4. Load sample supernatent.
  5. Wash with 2 mL 0.1 N HCl.
  6. Wash with 2 mL Methanol.
  7. Dry cartridge under vacuum for 5 minutes.
  8. Elute with 2 mL (5:95 v:v) ammonium hydroxide:Methanol.
  9. Evaporate eluent to dryness.
  10. Resuspend residue in appropriate mobile phase for your analysis.

For additional SPE application information and technical support, email support@phenomenex.com or visithttps://www.phenomenex.com/Home/TechnicalSupport.