A validated ultra-performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry method for the quantification of Brazilian green propolis main compounds.

Brazilian green propolis is used in folk medicine because of its various biological properties. The hydroalcoholic extract of Brazilian green propolis is characteristic for possessing several pharmacological properties. Phytochemical investigations have attributed some of these properties to the presence of compounds, which were chosen as analytical markers. This paper reports the development and analytical validation using UPLC-MS/MS in MRM mode. Veratraldehyde was used as an internal standard in qualitative and quantitative analyses of the extracts. Relative standard deviation values obtained for intra-day and inter-day precision were lower than 4%. Of the five parameters for robustness, wavelength detection and flow rate were the critical ones. Limits of detection and quantification ranged from 0.300 to 39.500 ng.mL -1 and from 1.400 to 85.00 ng.mL -1 , respectively. The recoveries were between 94.00 and 119.00%, with relative standard deviation values around 5.0%. The developed method is precise, sensitive, and reliable for analysing Brazilian green propolis.