An environmentally friendly and novel amine-based liquid phase microextraction of quercetin in food samples prior to its determination by UV-vis spectrophotometry.

Abstract

A novel and environmentally-friendly method, which includes determination of trace amounts of quercetin in samples by using UV-vis spectrophotometry after enrichment with amine-based liquid phase microextraction (LPME), has been developed. As extraction solvent, N,N-dimethyl-n-octylamine has been used and the quercetin concentration in extraction phase was determined by UV-vis spectrophotometry at 382.5nm. Important analytical parameters such as pH, extraction solvent type and volume, sample volume, extraction time were optimized by the method. Quercetin in the sample solution was extracted to 200μL of N,N-dimethyl-n-octylamine phase at pH4.0. The detection limit (LOD) and the quantitation limit (LOQ) values for quercetin were calculated as 0.07μg·mL-1 and 0.24μg·mL-1, respectively. Accuracy studies for the food samples was carried out by addition and recovery experiments. The developed method has been successfully applied to different food samples including spinach, green pepper, red onion and dill weed.