Rapid determination of solanesol in tobacco by high-performance liquid chromatography with evaporative light scattering detection following microwave-assisted extraction

Solanesol is the starting material for many high-value biochemicals, including coenzyme Q10 and Vitamin-K analogues. The aim of the current study was to develop a reliable and fast analytical procedure for the determination of solanesol in tobacco using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with evaporative light scattering detection (ELSD) coupled with microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) as an efficient sample preparation technique. The HPLC conditions were Agilent C18 column using acetonitrile–isopropanol (60:40, v/v) as mobile phase at a flow rate of 1 ml/min. ELSD conditions were optimized at nebulizer-gas flow rate of 1.5 l/min and drift tube temperature of 65 °C. The method was validated to achieve the satisfactory precision and recovery, and the calibration range was 0.1–1.5 mg/ml. The developed analytical procedure was successfully applied to determine solanesol content in tobacco samples from different growing regions in China.