Determination of phytic acid in cereals using ICP-AES to determine phosphorus.

A novel approach for determination of phytic acid in cereals has been applied in 2 traditional methods. In the first, phytic acid in a sample extract is first separated and concentrated by ion-exchange chromatography. The phytic acid concentrate is then quantitatively determined as phosphorus by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). In the second method, extracted phytic acid is first precipitated by FeCl3 solution. The complexed iron is converted to ferric hydroxide by adding NaOH, thus releasing phytic acid as soluble sodium phytate. Phytate is then quantitatively determined as phosphorus by ICP-AES. In these methods, both the difficult acid digestion and the spectrometric determination of phosphorus found in traditional methods are eliminated by using ICP-AES. This results in a method that is simpler, faster, and more accurate than earlier procedures.