Application of ionic liquids for elution of bioactive flavonoid glycosides from lime fruit by miniaturized matrix...

In this work, two flavonoid glycosides (neohesperidin and naringin) in lime fruit were effectively extracted by miniaturized matrix solid phase dispersion (MSPD), followed by ultra-performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detection. The best results were obtained using Florisil (150mg) as the sorbent and 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate (0.4mL, 250mM) as the elution solvent. This work represents the first attempt of using ionic liquids as a green eluent for extraction of the investigated compounds in miniaturized MSPD. Compared with the conventional methods, the proposed method is advantageous due to improved enrichment factor and reduced reagent consumption. A good linearity was observed with r(2) values (>0.998). Meanwhile, the method gave acceptable recoveries (90.16-96.47%) for the determination of flavonoids in plant samples. The limits of detection of the two analytes ranged between 4.08 and 5.04μg/g. The results showed that the optimized method has a great potential for sample preparation in routine analysis of complex plant samples.