The fruits of Ziziphus species have been utilized as food as well as crude drugs for their health benefits in China for thousands of years. This paper reported a reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method for the simultaneous characterization and quantitation of 11 triterpenic acids in chloroform extracts of jujube fruits by using an evaporative light scattering detector (ELSD) and electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS). The results showed that the contents of triterpenic acids in the fruits of Ziziphus jujuba var. spinosa were higher than those in the fruits of Z. jujuba, especially for the compound pomonic acid. Differences were also found among the different parts of Z. jujuba var. spinosa fruits with the sarcocarp having a higher amount of triterpenic acids than the seed and hard core.
In this study, a sensitive and rapid method for the simultaneous determination of free amino acids without derivatization using hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (HILIC-MS/MS) was developed. The method was performed on an ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) separation system coupled with a triple-quadrupole mass spectrometry (TQ-MS) instrument. Sufficient separation of 23 underivatized amino acids was achieved on an Acquity BEH Amide column (2.1 mm × 100 mm, 1.7 μm) in a single run of 12 min. Then the method was applied for the analysis of the free amino acids in 46 batches of Ziziphus jujuba fruits which comprised 39 cultivars from 26 cultivation regions. Multivariate statistical analysis was also used to investigate the differences in free amino acid profiles among the samples. This study showed that HILIC-UHPLC-TQ-MS is an effective technique to analyze underivatized amino acids in the food samples.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.