Simultaneous estimation of water soluble vitamin by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method in five wild edible plants consumed by the tribal people of North-Eastern region in India

Abstract

Phyllostachys mannii, Litsea cubeba, Polygonum chinense, Musa cheesmanii and Musa flaviflora are potent wild edible plants and consumed by the tribal people of North-eastern region in India. A reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method using photodiode array detector with gradient elution has been developed and validated for the simultaneous quantitation of several water-soluble vitamins like ascorbic acid (vitamin C), thiamine (vitamin B1), riboflavin (vitamin B2), niacin (vitamin B3), pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), pyridoxine (vitamin B6) and folic acid (vitamin B9) in these five wild edible plants. The chromatographic separation of vitamins were carried out on Acclaim C 18 column (5 μm particle size, 250 x 4.6 mm), Dionex Ultimate 3000 liquid chromatograph and detection was carried out at three different wave lengths (210, 245 and 254 nm) using a mobile phase of acetonitrile and aqueous trifluoro acetic acid (TFA, 0.01% v/v) solution with gradient elution. The results of investigation showed that these plants are rich sources of vitamins, especially the B-group of vitamins that can contribute immensely to nutrition, food security and health and therapeutic benefits. The high percentage of recovery (98-99%), low coefficient of variation (R2 > 0.99) and low limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) confirm the suitability of the method for simultaneous quantification of vitamins in these five plants under investigation.