The objective of this study was to develop a rapid, sensitive, and specific analytical method to study vitamin
K1 in fruits and vegetables. Accelerated solvent extraction and solid phase extraction was used for
sample preparation. Quantification was done by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry with
atmospheric pressure chemical ionization in selected reaction monitoring mode with deuterium-labeled
vitamin K1 as an internal standard. The precision was estimated as the pooled estimate of three replicates
performed on three different days for spinach, peas, apples, banana, and beetroot. The repeatability was
5.2% and the internal reproducibility was 6.2%. Recovery was in the range 90–120%. No significant difference
was observed between the results obtained by the present method and by a method using the same
principle as the CEN-standard i.e. liquid–liquid extraction and post-column zinc reduction with fluorescence
detection. Limit of quantification was estimated to 0.05 lg/100 g fresh weigh