UPLC Rapid Quantification of Ascorbic Acid in Several Fruits and Vegetables Extracted Using Different Solvents

Summary

Ascorbic acid or vitamin C is mostly found in natural products such as fruits and vegetables. Ultra performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) method has been developed to compare the ascorbic acid content in some fresh fruits (apple, orange) and vegetables (carrot, beet, cherry tomato) extracts with two different extraction solvents; i) 9% metaphosphoric acid, ii) 3% citric acid.
The compound has been detected and quantified by the use of UPLC equipped with Photodiode Array (PDA) detector.
The amount of ascorbic acid detected in fruits and vegetables extracts prepared with the two solvents mentioned was different. For the orange extracted using citric acid 3% recorded the highest concentration of ascorbic acid (38.2mg/100g FW) higher than with 9% metaphosphoric acid (33.3mg/100g FW), respectively the extractions of both varieties of apples, carrot, beet and cherry tomato with metaphosphoric extraction solvent recorded the highest values of ascorbic acid: 4.1mg/100g FW in case of ‘Golden’, 9.92mg/100g FW for carrot and 13.56mg/100g FW for beet.
The results showed that ascorbic acid content was higher by extraction with 9% metaphosphoric acid as compared, by extraction with 3% citric acid.