Field-amplified sample stacking β-cyclodextrin modified capillary electrophoresis for quantitative determination of diastereomeric saponins.

Successful simultaneous diastereomeric separation and sensitive determination of two pairs of triterpenoidal saponins have been achieved by capillary electrophoresis (CE) using β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) as a stereoselective agent to cooperate with borate complexation. A usual technique for isolation and group separation of saponins was developed as an appropriate purification step prior to the determination of individual saponins by CE. Soyasaponin I ( S1: ), azukisaponin V ( S2: ), bersimoside I ( S3: ) and bersimoside II ( S4: ) could be well separated within 14 min in a fused-silica capillary (60 cm long to the detector with an additional 10 cm to the cathode; 75 µm i.d.). The background electrolyte was borate buffer (80 mM, pH 10), containing 24 mM β-CD. The separation voltage was 14 kV with a detection wavelength of 195 nm. The sample was electrokinetically injected using a voltage of 16 kV for 12 s. Methanol (70%) was used as the diluent for field-amplified sample stacking after hydrodynamic injection of short water plug (5 cm, 4 s). The method was partially validated for linearity, repeatability, reproducibility, limits of detection and limits of quantification. The correlation coefficients of the calibration curves were all >0.998, and the recoveries were from 98.23 to 96.21%.