Abstract: A high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method with fluorescence detection was developed for the simultaneous determination of 11 quinolones (QNs) (norfloxacin, ofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, pefloxacin, lomefloxacin, danofloxacin, enrofloxacin, sarafloxacin, difloxacin, oxolinic acid and flumequine) residues in chicken muscle. The chicken muscle samples were extracted by 10% trichloroacetic acid/acetonitrile (7∶3, v/v) twice, diluted and cleaned up by a reversed-phase solid-phase extraction (SPE) cartridge. The QNs were separated on a reversed-phase C18 column (Hypersil BDS-C18) with mobile phase gradient elution (acetonitrile and water as mobile phases) and detected by a fluorescence detector with a wavelength program. The linear ranges of quinolone calibrations were 5-1200 μg/L in chicken muscle with the correlation coefficients more than 0.998. The recoveries for chicken muscle fortified with 11 QNs at three levels were 56%-119% with acceptable intra-batch relative standard deviations (RSD) (0.4%-16.1%) and inter-batch RSD (1.4%-23.0%). The limits of detection (LOD) and limits of quantification (LOQ) were 1-23 μg/kg and 4-40 μg/kg for the 11 QNs, respectively. The sensitivity meets the quantification requirements for the residue analysis.

Key words: chicken muscle , quinolones (QNs), solid-phase extraction(SPE), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)