Determination of thiamine (vitamin B1) and riboflavin (vitamin B2) in meat and liver by high-performance liquid chromatography.

HPLC methods described so far for the determination of thiamine and riboflavin in meat samples have used mostly fluorescence detection. The aim of this work was to elaborate a suitable method with UV detection for this purpose and to compare the thiamine and riboflavin contents obtained for meat and liver samples from various pig groups. Homogenized spare rib, chop, ham and liver samples were treated with acid and heated (at 121 degrees C, 30 min), followed by enzymatic digestion to release the vitamins. After a clean-up procedure the simultaneous determination of thiamine and riboflavin was performed with a Nucleosil ODS (3 microns) packed column at 45 degrees C. The mobile phase was phosphate buffer (pH 3.0)-acetonitrile (84:16, v/v) containing 5 mM sodium heptanesulphonate. The relative standard deviation was 5% for thiamine and 12% for riboflavin in meat and 8% for thiamine and 5% for riboflavin in liver for four parallel determinations.