Determination of Capsaicinoids in Foods Using Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatography

A sensitive, precise, and specific ultra high performance liquid chromatographic (u-HPLC) method was developed for the analysis of capsaicin in foods. The method validation parameters yielded good results, including linearity, precision, accuracy, and recovery. The u-HPLC separation was performed on a reversed column C-18 (particle size 2 mu m, i.d. 2 mm, length 50 mm, followed by fluorescence detection-excitation 280 nm, emission 325 nm). The recovery of capsaicin in gochujang was more than 91%, and the detection limit and lower determination limit of u-HPLC analysis were 0.054 and 0.163 mu g/mL for capsaicin and 0.053 and 0.160 mu g/mL for dihydrocapsaicin, respectively. The calibration graph for capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin was linear from 0.2 to 10.0 mu g/mL for u-HPLC analysis. The inter-day and intra-day precisions (relative standard deviations) were <5.21% for capsaicin and <9.79% for dihydrocapsaicin while the average recoveries obtained were quantitative 91.1-94.8% for capsaicin, 91.4-97.0% for dihydrocapsacin, indicating good accuracy of the u-HPLC method.