beta carotene

[vestelshirley]

am looking for beta carotene extraction from carrots and brocolli. Am trying one with EtOH/KOH followed by hexane liq/liq extraction. THe mobile phase is MeOH/THF/ACN, but the only peak that is reminescent ot beta carotene is one that absorbs at 406 nm instead of 457 nI m. Any suggestions?

[Bruce Hamilton]

Congratulations on your extraction of chlorophyll, sorry that it wasn't the compound you were looking for.

Carotenoid analysis is known to require attention to detail. My suggestion would be to follow one of the standard methods for carotinoids, and a good place for information would be...
http://www.ilsi.org/file/carotenoid.pdf

Alternatively a google search eg " Carotenoid cabbage analysis " will locate many other sources of information on the appropriate procedure.

Please keep having fun,

Bruce Hamilton

[vestelshirley]

My tech is hung up on the ethanol/koh extraction. I can't help but think anything that has THF or Acetone as part of the first step would be preferable. I got your reference and thank you. We get involved in so many projects here with the research faculty, by the time we are comfortable with the chemistries and analysis, the project is over.

again , thanks

[Bryan Evans]

Hi Vestel -

For your information, below are carotinoids separated on Cadenza CD-C18 (3um):

http://www.silvertonesciences.com/files/TI242E.pdf