Substitution of Sudan I for lycopene and β-carotene standard sample

Lycopene is a kind of carotenoids with multi-biological functions. It easily occurs oxidation and trans-cis isomerization for lots of double bond. high performance liquid chromatography(HPLC) method needs a standard lycopene sample to confirm lycopene's retention times and content, but the standard lycopene is very expensive and can't be stored for a long time, which has limited the application of HPLC. According to the fact that Sudan Ⅰ has the same absorption characteristics as that of lycopene and β-carotene at 450?nm, a new method, using sudan I as the standard sample, was developed to analyze the content of lycopene and β-carotene. The residues show that the analytic error is less than 2%, which indicates that it can be used to test the content of lycopene and β-carotene. And a feasible equation for calculuating the content was also obtained.