Simultaneous Determination of 18 Flavonoids in Citrus Fruits by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography

【Objective】This study aimed to investigate a high-performance liquid chromatograph(HPLC)method for the determination of different kinds of flavonoids,namely,eriocitrin,taxifolin,narirutin,naringin,hesperidin,neohesperidin,rhoifolin,quercitrin,eridictyol,didymin,poncirin,naringenin,luteolin,kaempferol,diosmetin,sinensetin,nobiletin and tangeretin in citrus fruits.【Method】The chromatographic separation was performed on a ZORABX SB-C18 column kept at 25℃ using methanol /formic acid/water mixture as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 0.7 mL.min-1 through gradient elution and the detection wavelength was set at 283 nm for flavanones,330 nm for flavones and polymethoxylated flavones and 367 nm for flavonol.【Result】 Results showed that the thorough separation of 18 flavonoids was achieved within 42 min.The method exhibited a linear range of 62.4-960 mg.L-1(r=0.9998-1.0000) and limits of quantification(LOQ) ranging from 0.05-0.133 μg.mL-1.The average recovery rates of this method were 88.70%-104.76%,with a relative standard derivation range of 0.33%-3.05%.【Conclusion】This method is simple,rapid,accurate,reliability,and can be used for the determination of flavonoids in citrus fruits.