Rapid determination of skatole and indole in pig back fat by normal-phase liquid chromatography

A rapid normal-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method for the quantitative determination of indole and skatole in pig back fat samples has been developed. The compounds were extracted by shaking the samples at ambient temperature in hexane-2-propanol (92:8, v/v). The sample preparation procedure was simple because it was not necessary to remove the fat from the samples. The compounds were separated on a 250 x 4.6 mm I.D., 5 micron Hypersil aminopropylsilica column. Fluorescence (excitation at 280 nm and emission at 360 nm) was used for selective detection. Recoveries for skatole and indole, relative to the internal standard, were 10.3 +/- 0.9% and 99.6 +/- 4.4%, respectively. Linearity determined in fat samples was in the range of 0.05-1 microgram/g and the correlations observed were R2 = 0.9914 for the indole and R2 = 0.9916 for skatole.