Nontargeted Screening for Flavonoids in Salicornia Plant by Reversed-Phase Liquid Chromatography–Electrospray Orbitrap Data-Dependent MS2/MS3

Abstract

The Salicornia genus has great potential in agrifood industries because of its nutritional benefits related to its high content of antioxidant compounds, including flavonoids. A nontargeted method based on reversed-phase liquid chromatography–electrospray orbitrap data-dependent MS2/MS3 and the fragment ion search (FISh) strategy was developed to screen flavonoids in Salicornia plants. An extensive study of fragmentation of a set of flavonoid standards allowed for the definition of 15 characteristic fragment ions for flagging flavonoids in the plant matrix. The nontargeted analysis was applied to Salicornia europaea species and allowed for the annotation of 25 candidate flavonoids, including 14 that had not been reported previously. Structural prediction of two unreported flavonoids and their isomeric forms was based on an advanced data processing method using an in silico approach and in-house databases compiling flavonoid-specific chemical substitution. Finally, the method developed allowed for the optimization of extraction yields of flavonoids from the plant matrix.

Targeted Offline Two-Dimensional HPLC and UHPLC-Orbitrap-MS Combined with Molecular Networking Reveal the Effect of Processing on Chemical Constituents of Xuetong (the Stem of Kadsura heteroclita)

“…This feature enables the rapid and targeted identification of unknown compounds in complex MS data [15]. Other commonly used methods for MS data processing and compound structure identification include fragment-ion similarity searching (FISh), offline and online database matching, neutral loss searching (NLS), and mass defect filtering (MDF) [16][17][18].…”