Abstract:

A method was developed for the determination of gardenia yellow in instant noodle by accelerated solvent
extraction (ASE) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The crushed samples were extracted twice using
ASE with methanol at 50 ℃ and 1 500 psi, followed by defatting using n-hexane saturated with acetonitrile. Then the
gardenia yellow were eluted on XBridgeTM C18 with a mobile phase composed of acetonitrile and 0.1% formic acid solution,
and detected by photo-diode array (PDA) detector at 441 nm for crocin and 427 nm for crocetion. The developed method had
a linear range of 1.0?20 μg/mL for the two analytes with good correlation coefficients (r > 0.999 6). The mean recoveries
were 83.64%?94.82%, with relative standard deviation (RSD) of 0.92%?2.13% (n = 6). The limit of quantitation (LOQ)
and the limit of detection (LOD) of this method for gardenia yellow were 0.5?1.0 μg/g and 0.05?0.2 μg/g, respectively. The
method proved to be quick, simple, automated, reliable, accurate, and suitable to detect gardenia yellow in instant noodle.

Key words: high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), accelerated solvent extraction (ASE), gardenia yellow, instant noodle