Quantification of cis-Abienol in Oriental Tobacco Leaves by LC

Abstract

A rapid and accurate method for the quantification of cis-abienol in oriental tobacco leaves by normal phase liquid chromatography was developed. Freeze-dried tobacco samples were sonicated in methylene chloride for 10 min. The supernatant was purified using a silica gel solid phase extraction cartridge. Ten milliliter of the resulting methylene chloride eluate was collected, then separated on a 250 × 4.6 mm, 5 μm particle-size CN column with n-hexane: ethyl acetate, 100:2 (v/v) at a flow rate of 1 mL min−1. cis-Abienol was detected by UV absorption at 254 nm. The linear range was from 2.14 × 10−4 to 4.28 × 10−2 mg mL−1 and the correlation coefficient was 1.000. The average recovery was 98.7, 105.2 and 103.1% in five replicated sets of tobacco samples spiked with 0.2856, 0.7140 and 1.904 mg cis-abienol. The relative standard deviations (RSDs) were 1.04, 0.63 and 1.25%, respectively (n = 5). Limit of detection (S/N = 3) was 21.84 μg g−1 and limit of quantification (S/N = 10) was 72.80 μg g−1. The method was found to be suitable for determination of cis-abienol in oriental tobacco leaves. Furthermore, pure cis-abienol used for method validation was obtained by preparative reversed phase high-performance liquid chromatography. Identification was performed by UV detection, nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectrometry.