Quantitative analysis of cephamycin C in fermentation broths by means of thin-layer spectrodensitometry

A method has been developed that consists of one-dimensional thin-layer chromatography of the samples on pre-coated silica gel 60F254 plates followed by an in situ spectrophotometric evaluation of the chromatograms at 273 nm. Statistical evaluations showed a linear calibration (r2 greater than 0.999) for the range of 0.2-20 microgram/spot. The relative standard deviations for broth samples containing 1.505 and 12.47 microgram Cephamycin C per spot were 3.61 and 1.07%, respectively. The recovery was virtually quantitative: 97.6%. The correlation with a liquid chromatographic method was quite acceptable with r2 = 0.99124 and b = 0.998 (slope).