Project Number: 1235-52000-048-00
Project Type: Appropriated

Start Date: Feb 22, 2004
End Date: Feb 21, 2009

Objective:
To develop analytical methodology for the analysis of simple and polyphenolic compounds in foods.

Approach:
Due to the variety of phenolic compounds that exist in plant based foods (nearly 8000), our method development investigations are structured into three major objectives: determination of glycosylated (conjugated) flavonoids, determination of phenolic acids, and development of a fingerprinting method for total phenolics content. Our approach, with respect to the glycosylated flavonoids, will be to develop a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method with both UV-Vis and mass spectrometry (MS) detection for a series of groups of flavonoids based on polarity spectrum of the molecules. For the phenolic acids, our approach is to develop a single reversed-phase HPLC/UV system for the separation and quantification of prominent food phenolic acids. For the total phenolics fingerprint, our approach is to use, IR, Near IR and MS data collected on unseparated fractions and use chemometric analysis to establish a classification process for various cultivars of foods high in phenolic compounds. Developing analytical methods for these measurements includes not only choice of analytical instrumentation for separation, detection and quantitation but also factors that stabilize, liberate, extract and identify phenolic acids and flavonoids from the complex food matrix. Hence, part of our approach is to develop, concurrent with method development, quantitative sample preparation conditions (e.g. extraction parameters and hydrolysis conditions).