Development of a Novel, Sensitive, Selective, and Fast Methodology to Determine Malondialdehyde in Leaves of Melon Plants by Ultra-High-Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

MELISA E. YONNY; ARIEL RODRIGUEZ TORRESSI; MÓNICA A. NAZARENO; SOLEDAD CERUTTI

Journal of Analytical Methods in Chemistry

Hindawi

Lugar: Nasr City, Cairo 11816; Año: 2017 vol. 2017

2090-8865

Early production of melon plant (Cucumis melo) is carried out using tunnels structures, where extreme temperatures lead to highreactive oxygen species production and, hence, oxidative stress.Malondialdehyde(MDA) is a recognized biomarker of the advancedoxidative status in a biological system. Thus a reliable, sensitive, simple, selective, and rapid separative strategy based on ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography coupled to positive electrospray-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-(+)ESI-MS/MS)was developed for the first time to measure MDA, without derivatization, in leaves of melon plants exposed to stress conditions.The detection and quantitation limits were 0.02 𝜇g⋅L−1 and 0.08 𝜇g⋅L−1, respectively, which was demonstrated to be better than themethodologies currently reported in the literature. The accuracy values were between 96% and 104%. The precision intraday andinterday values were 2.7% and 3.8%, respectively.The optimized methodology was applied tomonitoring of changes inMDA levelsbetween control and exposed to thermal stress conditionsmelon leaves samples. Important preliminary conclusions were obtained.Besides, a comparison between MDA levels in melon leaves quantified by the proposed method and the traditional thiobarbituricacid reactive species (TBARS) approach was undertaken. The MDA determination by TBARS could lead to unrealistic conclusionsregarding the oxidative stress status in plants.