Determination of important flavour precursor compounds (Amadori compounds) in cigarettes by LC-MS/MS

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

A simple and rapid determination of two Amadori compounds in cigarettes, 1-deoxy-1-L-proline-D-fructose ( Fru-Pro ) and 1-deoxy-1-L-alanine-D-fructose ( Fru-Ala ), which are the important intermediates in Maillard reaction, was achieved by HPLC-MS/MS. Eighty-eight commercial brand cigarettes of 5 different styles were employed to investigate their diversities on Fru-Pro and Fru-Ala. The contents of Fru-Pro and Fru-Ala in all cigarette samples correlate with each other. Comparison of the contents of two compounds reveals a substantial difference for different cigarettes: the contents of the two Amadori compounds in Chinese flue-cured cigarettes are remarkably higher than in British flue-cured, American, Japanese and Chinese blend cigarettes. This might be beneficial for using these two compounds as characteristic markers to identify the flavor-specific Chinese flue-cured cigarettes.