Determination of irradiation induced hydrocarbons in beef jerky by gc-ms

This study was aimed to analyze the effects of ionizing radiations on beef jerky through determination of induced hydrocarbons. The samples were irradiated with gamma and electron-beam at 0, 1, 3, 5 and 7 kGy doses. The induced hydrocarbons were extracted by solid phase extraction (SPE) and identified by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The application of analytical technique was validated by linearity, limits of detection, correlation variance and spiking recovery experiments. The main hydrocarbons induced by irradiations were from palmitic acid (1-tetradecene and pentadecane), stearic acid (heptadecane and 1-hexadecene) and oleic acid (8-heptadecene and 1,7-hexadecadiene). Stearic acid and oleic acid showed high degradation rate at alpha-carbon position, while C/sub n-2/ hydrocarbons were higher than C/sub n-1/. The formation pattern of induced hydrocarbons was similar in both gamma-ray and e-beam but their concentrations were variable. The hydrocarbons induced by irradiations were detected in all irradiated samples and remained absent in the non-irradiated controls. Conclusively the detected hydrocarbons could be good marker compounds to determine the irradiated samples of beef jerky. (author)