Chromatographic separation of capsaicinoids from spice pepper products on different columns

Abstract

Different C18-based reversed phases were investigated for the efficient separation of capsaicinoids from spice paprika. Isocratic elution with water and acetonitrilie was performed on five analytical columns having solid-core or fully porous adsorbents including monolithic. It was found that methanol extracts most sufficiently CAP and NDHC, while the combination of methanol and acetonitrilie was proved to be the best for the maximal extraction of DHC. The most efficient separation could be achieved with Purospher (3 µm, 150 × 4.6 mm) column with water-acetonitrile 42:52 eluent. The fastest separation was achieved on a monolithic column that has a net structure silica gel. Recovery of capsaicinoids at low (126 µg), medium (630 µg) and high (1260 µg) spiked concentrations was found to be 110.2, 94.2 and 94.4%, respectively. The intraday and interday precisions were 3.63–7.17% and 2.29–6.72% respectively, for all capsaicinoids tested with the major ones showing precision fewer than 5%. LOD and LOQ were found to be 0.001 and 0.005 µg mL−1 for CAP and 0.001 and 0.004 µg mL−1 for DHC respectively. The method was applied on 5 hybrid line candidates (‘66072’, ’66073’, ’66079’, ’66080’, ’66081’) and on ‘Sz178’ and ‘Kalóz’ paprika genotypes to evaluate their capsaicinoid content and composition.