About the HPLC Lab

HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography) is a technique to efficiently and accurately separate and quantify many soluble compounds in plants by using a pump, column, autosampler, and detector. Most phytochemicals compounds are soluble to polar or non-polar solvents and can be extracted by using a proper solvent, and can be analyzed by using an HPLC system. The HPLC systems are fully automated and can analyze many samples without supervision. At VFIC lab, we have eight units of HPLC systems and each unit is assigned to a compound for an efficient analysis and minimal maintenance. However, a new setting can be done for a new compound analysis. We have stocks of different columns and detectors for the analysis of various compounds in fruits and vegetables. Compounds being tested are sugars, carotenoids, flavonoids, limonoids, phenolic, amino acids, cynarin, capsaicins, pyruvic acid, vitamin C, and total phenolic. Additional compounds will be analyzed when necessary.

Research

Our research in the HPLC lab is closely linked to the Analysis lab works. Most of extraction of those phytochemicals will require an HPLC analysis. We test different columns and composition and programming of solvent for the most optimum condition of the analysis. Some compounds are so similar in chemical or physical properties and are hard to separate each other. Then, various techniques are used to efficiently separate and quantify them. We usually begin with adopting a method published earlier but some modification and optimization are common for better and efficient analysis.

Current Projects

We are routinely analyzing many compounds listed above for our Center projects. Samples are coming from our own research projects and from our collaborators located throughout Texas or other states. Currently, we are testing ascorbic acid in peppers, amino acids in onions, quercetin and luteolin in peppers, capsaicins in various germplasm of peppers. Cynarin in artichoke is new compound that we are working as a new project. Systems to measure total phenolic or DPPH are under development for a fast and accurate analysis.