A method for the simultaneous determination of β-ODAP, α-ODAP, homoarginine and polyamines in Lathyrus sativus by liquid chromatography using a new extraction procedure Original Research Article

The paper proposes a new method to extract β-N-oxalyl-l-α,β-diaminopropionic acid (β-ODAP), α-N-oxalyl-l-α,β-diaminopropionic acid (α-ODAP), homoarginine and polyamines using 0.2 M HClO4 for only 1 h at 0–4 °C. Based on the proposed extraction, an assay is presented for simultaneously determining polyamines, the neurotoxin β-ODAP, its non-neurotoxic isomer α-ODAP and homoarginine in Lathyrus sativus extracts using a liquid chromatography (LC) system after derivatization with para-nitrobenzyloxycarbonyl chloride (PNZ-Cl). The method exhibits some prominent advantages, which include: shorter extraction-time, simultaneous extraction of non-protein amino acids and polyamines and inhibition of the isomerization of β-ODAP to α-ODAP. The assay proved satisfactory for the quantitative determination of L. sativus extracts of seeds and seedlings.