Analysis of Natural Mixtures of Triacylglycerols Using HPLC/MS Technique

Abstract

An HPLC/MS method was developed for analysis of triacylglycerols (TGs) in plant oils from hazelnut, walnut, cashew nut, and almond as well as from poppy, yellow melon, rose hip, fig, date and black currant seeds. The objective of the present work is unambiguous identification of the maximum number of TGs, based on the optimisation of temperature, column length and gradient steepness. Non-aqueous reversed-phase HPLC with an optimized acetonitrile - propan-2-ol gradient, 30 + 15 cm Nova-Pak C₁₈ columns and temperature 25 °C were used in the TG identification based on their positive-ion APCI mass spectra. Total 130 TGs derived from 22 fatty acids C8 - C24 with 0 - 4 double bonds were identified.