Detection of Ricin in Plant Extracts and Soil Using Liquid Chromatography–High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry

A procedure is developed for the detection of ricin in plant extracts and soil based on its hydrolysis with trypsin and chymotrypsin with the formation of specific peptides and their determination by HPLC with high-resolution tandem mass spectrometric detection. The conditions for the sample preparation of plant extracts and soil samples, mass spectrometric detection in the mode of selected reaction monitoring and gradient elution of specific peptides are optimized. The limit of detection of ricin in extracts is 5 μg/mL. The developed procedure is tested on real samples of plant extracts containing natural ricin.