Capillary electrophoresis in phytochemical analysis (2014-2017)

Soluble Carbohydrates in Several Transylvanian Potato Cultivars

This paper is the first to report the soluble carbohydrate content at harvest for eight Transylvanian potato cultivars: Christian, Cumidava, Kronstadt, Riviera, Roclas, Rustic, Tampa and Zamolxis. The aim of this study is to explore the soluble carbohydrate composition of the above-mentioned cultivars, since such quantitative information is important for breeding programs, consumers and processing units. High performance liquid chromatography was used for analysis, separations being achieved using a Prominence Shimadzu system with a refractive index detector, under isocratic conditions with a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile: water (80:20%) delivered at 1 mL/min; baseline separations of the target analytes were accomplished with an EC 250/4 Nucleodur 100-5 NH₂ RP column in less than 10 min. The carbohydrate concentrations were found to range from 24.03 mg/100 g (Zamolxis) to 76.58 mg/100 g (Riviera) for fructose, while the corresponding range was from 52.78 mg/100 g (Zamolxis) to 232.97 mg/100 g (Riviera) for glucose and from 238.41 mg/100 g (Zamolxis) to 378.45 (Cumidava) for sucrose. Chromatographic data were then subjected to chemometric analysis; the association of these complementary techniques allowed a fast selection of cultivars with low-reducing carbohydrate content for food processing purposes-the cultivars Zamolxis, Kronstadt, Christian and Roclas were outlined exhibiting both the lowest reducing carbohydrate content and the lowest sucrose content.

Extraction Systems and Analytical Techniques for Food Phenolic Compounds: A Review

Phenolic compounds are highly valuable food components due to their potential utilisation as natural bioactive and antioxidant molecules for the food, cosmetic, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries. For this purpose, the development and optimisation of efficient extraction methods is crucial to obtain phenolic-rich extracts and, for some applications, free of interfering compounds. It should be accompanied with robust analytical tools that enable the standardisation of phenolic-rich extracts for industrial applications. New methodologies based on both novel extraction and/or analysis are also implemented to characterise and elucidate novel chemical structures and to face safety, pharmacology, and toxicity issues related to phenolic compounds at the molecular level. Moreover, in combination with multivariate analysis, the extraction and analysis of phenolic compounds offer tools for plant chemotyping, food traceability and marker selection in omics studies. Therefore, this study reviews extraction techniques applied to recover phenolic compounds from foods and agri-food by-products, including liquid-liquid extraction, solid-liquid extraction assisted by intensification technologies, solid-phase extraction, and combined methods. It also provides an overview of the characterisation techniques, including UV-Vis, infra-red, nuclear magnetic resonance, mass spectrometry and others used in minor applications such as Raman spectroscopy and ion mobility spectrometry, coupled or not to chromatography. Overall, a wide range of methodologies are now available, which can be applied individually and combined to provide complementary results in the roadmap around the study of phenolic compounds.