Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography for the Rapid Determination of Allura Red in a Commercial Liquid Drink

Abstract

A new ultra performance liquid chromatographic (UPLC) method was developed for the rapid determination of allura red in a commercial liquid drink. Chromatographic separation and quantitation of allura red were accomplished on an Acquity UPLC (TM) BEH C(18) (50 mm x 2.1 mm, 1.7 mu m) column system using an isocratic elution with a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile and acetic acid with 3 % triethylamine (20:80: v/v) at a constant flow rate, 0.4 mL/min. Chromatographic calibration graph for allura red in the linear concentration range of 1.0-10.0 mu g/mL was calculated by using the linear least square regression analysis based on the relationship between the concentration and the peak area with photodiode array detection at the wavelength 510 nm. The UPLC method was validated by using the standard addition technique and successfully applied to the UPLC quantitation of the commercial liquid drinking samples. We conclude that a good agreement of UPLC quantitation results was reported.