Targeted analysis of phenolic compounds by LC-MS v1

Cell-wall-bound (CWB) aromatics such as ferulate and p-coumarate play important physiological roles in plant development and response to stresses. Their presence also poses some challenges and opportunities during processing of plant biomass in various agro-industrial applications. To this end, we have developed a robust high-throughput reversed-phase liquid chromatography mass spectrometry method for quantifying CWB phenolic compounds. The method showed excellent linearity (R2 = ≥0.999) and intraday retention time repeatability (≤ 0.31 %RSD) for ferulate and p-coumarate. The limits of detection and quantitation for these analytes were ≤ 39 nM and 130 nM, respectively. Furthermore, there was very little effect of the CWB sample matrix on the retention times of the analytes and analyte percent recoveries from the CWB sample matrix was ≥83.91%.