“…A high-performance liquid chromatograph (Jasco 880PU, Tokyo, Japan) equipped with a manual 10 ml loop injector, a refractive index detector (RI-3, Varian, Sunnyvale, USA) and a recorder (Varian 4290, USA) was used. The analysis was carried out using a 250 mm  4 mm Lichrosorb NH 2 Hibar RT 250-4 prepacked column (Merck, Dorset, UK) with acetonitrile/water (80: 20) as mobile phase at a¯ow rate of 1.5 ml min À1 . For HPLC analysis, 5 g of each sample was suspended in 30 ml of distilled water and homogenised using a Politron (PT 3000, Kinematica AG, Littau, Switzerland) for 1 min.…”