Improvement of chemical analysis of antibiotics. XII. Simultaneous analysis of seven tetracyclines in honey.

An analytical system for the simultaneous determination of residual oxytetracycline, tetracycline, chlortetracycline, doxycycline, methacycline, demethylchlortetracycline and minocycline in honey has been established by a combination of simple thin-layer chromatographic (TLC) and precise high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) methods. In this system, screening by TLC can detect tetracyclines (TCs) at a level of 0.1 ppm in honey without the need for special equipment, and the quantitative method by HPLC can determine TCs with good recovery (83.7-99.6%) and coefficient variation (0.9-4.3%).