Abstract: A simple method was developed for determining lupeol in fruits by reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC). Separation was carried out on reversed-phase Nucleosil C18 column (5μm, 250 mm × 4.6 mm i.d.) by using a mixture of methanol and water (20:80, pH 3.2 ± 0.05 adjusted by 50% phosphoric acid) as mobile phase A, and methanol containing 0.01% phosphoric acid as mobile phase B (A:B = 4:96) at a flow rate of 1.2 mL/min. The column temperature was hold at 40 ℃, and the detection wavelength was set as 210 nm. The correlation coefficient of the linear calibration curve (y = 4.6068x + 11.2640) was 0.9992 at the concentration range of 5 to 250μg/mL. The relative standard deviations (RSDs) of retention time and peak area in precision experiments for 5 replicate analyses and 9 replicate analyses in 48 h were 0.2107% and 1.2843%, and 0.3383% and 1.9737%, respectively. The recovery rate range was between 94.971% and 101.964% with a RSD of 2.5825%. The detection limit of this method was 1.8886μg/mL. The content of lupeol in dried Chinese olive powder was 359 μg/g, which was higher than that in strawberry, banana, Jufeng grape, American red grape and papaya. Therefore, the developed method is practicable for qualitative and quantitative determination of lupeol in fruits.

Key words: reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC), lupeol, fruit