Comprehensive 2D Separation of Carotenoids in Red Chili Pepper by the Nexera-e System

Introduction

Carotenoids are naturally occurring organic pigments that are divided into two classes, carotenes, consisting only of carbon and hydrogen, and xanthophylls, which contain oxygen. Carotenoids are rich in double bonds, and therefore have received much attention in recent years as antioxidants, which are known for their disease preventive properties, including lifestyle-related diseases. The extensive range of carotenoids found in foods makes it difficult to conduct simultaneous separation and quantitation by conventional HPLC. However, the Nexera-e comprehensive two-dimensional LC is particularly suited for such analyses. Here, carotenoids extracted from red chili pepper were subjected to two-dimensional analysis, in which micro-scale separation was conducted in the first stage using normal phase conditions, and separation using reversed phase conditions was tried in the second dimension. For detection, a combination of a photodiode array (PDA) connected to the LCMS-8030 triple quadrupole mass spectrometer was used. Because the separation modes, normal and reversed phases, differ in the first and second dimensions, this might be considered a two-dimensional LC method by which the greatest orthogonality possible is obtained.

May 25, 2015 GMT