The Comparison of Chromatographic Methods for Ergosterol Determination and Their Application in Analysis of Upland Pasture Soil

Abstract

Ergosterol, a biomarker of living saprotrophic fungi, was obtained from soil by microwave-assisted extraction and determined by GC-MS-MS, HPLC, and GC-FID. The GC-MS-MS technique was used to monitor fungal biomass in the soils differently impacted by overwintering cattle. The amount of ergosterol in soil increased from 0.93 ?????? 0.34 to 29.28 ?????? 3.07 ??????g g????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????¹ of soil. The detection limits in GC-MS-MS and HPLC methods were ca. ten times lower than in GC-FID. Whereas GC-MS-MS is the best method for monitoring the complex sterol profile in the environment, the selective MS-MS mode allowed the determination of ergosterol in complex matrices by elimination of coeluting peaks. The enrichment of cattle-impacted soils in non-fungal sterols (campesterol, stigmaserol and ??????-sitosterol) and stanols (ergostanol, sitostanol) was due to digested plant materials and rumen microflora, suggesting significant biochemical changes in the pasture soils under study.