Simultaneous determination of flavonoids in different citrus fruit juices and beverages by high-performance liquid chromatography and analysis of their chromatographic profiles by chemometrics

Abstract

Citrus fruits are of great interest because they contain flavonoids which are health promoting substances. Hesperidin, nobiletin and tangeretin are flavonoid glycosides that occur naturally in citrus. In the present study, a reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method has been developed for the rapid separation and determination of hesperidin, nobiletin and tangeretin in different fresh citrus fruit juices and commercial citrus beverages. Furthermore, principal component analysis was applied to their chromatographic profiles. Classification of orange, mandarin and hybrid was achieved. The possibility of estimating the approximate juice content of commercial beverages based on their PC1 values was attempted. These results demonstrated that the combination of HPLC and chemometrics offers a feasible and efficient approach for quality evaluation of citrus fruits and beverages.