Accurate Determination of Oosporein in Fungal Culture Broth by Differential Pulse Polarography

A simple and accurate differential pulse polarographic method has been developed for the determination of oosporein in the culture broth of the fungus Beauveria brongniartii. This hydroxy-benzoquinone derivative is the only major secondary metabolite secreted by this entomopathogenic fungus, which is used as biological pest control agent (BCA) against Melolontha melolontha larvae. It can be found in the host organism as well as in the formulated product. The polarographic behavior of oosporein was examined in various buffer systems over the pH range 3-10. In Britton-Robinson buffer/methanol solution (3:7 v/v, pH 5.5) the differential pulse polarograms exhibited reproducible peaks at Ep = -0.18 V vs silver/silver chloride/potassium chloride (3 M). Under these conditions, a plot of peak height vs concentration of oosporein was found to be linear over the range 5.9 x 10 -7 to 2.5 x 10 -5 M (0.18-7.74 μg mL -1 ; r = 0.9998). The detection limit was calculated to be 54 ng mL -1 . To evaluate the concentration of oosporein, the standard addition method was applied. The analysis of oosporein in the culture broth led to a mean value of 524.9 μg mL -1 broth with a relative standard deviation (S rel ) of ±2.6%. The proposed polarographic method is accurate, not time-consuming, and it is of low cost because no separation steps are necessary.