Abstract:

In this article, extraction, clean-up and ultra-performance liquid chromatographic analysis of benzoic acid and sorbic acid in honey and honey products were investigated. The samples were dissolved in water first. Benzoic acid and sorbic acid were extracted by an ultrasonic method. After clean up processing with high-speed centrifugation and filtration, the extract was determined by an ultra-performance liquid chromatography with PDA detector. A gradient separation was achieved within 4 min using BEH Shield RP18 column (2.1 mm ×100 mm, 1.7 μm) with ammonium acetate and ethanol as a mobile phase. The developed method was a simple, fast and sensitive. The limit of detection for benzoic acid and sorbic acid were 2.5 mg/kg and 2.0 mg/kg, respectively. The recovery rates of spiked benzoic acid and sorbic acid were 94.1%－102.3% and 96.2%－99.8%, respectively. The relative standard deviations were less than 5%. This method has been successfully applied to analyze some real samples from beekeeper and market for investigating the distribution of benzoic acid and sorbic acid in honey and honey products.

Key words: honey, honey product, benzoic acid, sorbic acid, ultra-performance liquid chromatography