Determination of carboxylic acids, carbohydrates and metals in different tomato cultivars by HPLC-ICP-AES in a single chromatographic run

Abstract

The determination of carbohydrates, carboxylic acids and metals is a subject of great interest in the field of food science because their presence and concentration can influence on food quality. Besides the study of the profiles of these compounds can permit the discrimination between different varieties of a product. Unfortunately, the usually employed chromatographic detectors (i.e., refractive index, fluorescence, UV-visible, pulsed amperometric) do not allow the determination of these three groups of compounds. However, this problem can be solved by means of the use of an ICP-AES Spectrometer. The aim of the present work is to carry out the determination of carbohydrates, carboxylic acids and metals in a single chromatographic run by means of the coupling of High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and ICP-AES in order to discriminate between several varieties of tomato according to their profiles.