High-performance liquid chromatographic method for the determination of phytate

✍ Scribed by Ernst Graf; Frederick R. Dintzis

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 409 KB
• Volume: 119
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-2697
• DOI: 10.1016/0003-2697(82)90606-6

✦ Synopsis

An improved method for the determination of phytate (myo-inositol 1,2,3,5/4,6 hexakis (dihydrogen phosphate)) in plants is described. Phytate is extracted with 0.5 N HCI, purified and concentrated on an AG l-X8 anion-exchange resin, taken to dryness in a vacuum desiccator, and analyzed by reverse-phase liquid chromatography on a PBondapak CIs column. The refractive index peak due to phytate is well separated from a minor salt peak, and the area under the peak is linearly proportional to the phytate concentration over a wide range. Unlike most conventional methods involving precipitation by FeCI,, the simpler and more reliable high-performance liquid chromatographic (hplc) assay avoids the numerous assumptions inherent in the iron precipitation, and accuracy is independent of the phytate content. As little as 0.003% phytate in plants may be quantitated with a coefficient of variation of less than 5%. When several cereal brans are analyzed by both the present method and a calorimetric method, excellent agreement is obtained between the values for phytate content at concentrations greater than 0.2%; lower concentrations can be detected only by the hplc method.