Determination of five Monascus pigments in meat products by high performance liquid chromatography method.

A high performance liquid chromatography(HPLC) method was set up to analyze the content of five Monascus pigments in meat products.The samples were extracted with methanol +ethyl acetate(2∶8,v/v),separated with Eclipse plus.C18 [5 m,25 cm ×4.6 mm(i.d.)] analytical column,and gradient-eluted by using phosphoric acid solution(pH=2.5±0.3) and acetonitrile as mobile phase with the flow rate of 1 mL/min.The five Monascus pigments were separated for 20 min and determined by HPLC with a diode array detector,and the determination wavelength was 400 nm.The correlation coefficients(r2) of this method were not less than 0.99910,the limits of detecting the five Monascus pigments in meat products were between 0.52 mg/kg and 1.05 mg/kg(S/N=3),and the average standard-adding recoveries ranged from 75% to 108% with RSDs(n=8) of 1.6%~7.6% for all the compounds.The results indicated that this method was accurate,sensitive,highly reproducible and fast,and it was suitable for the analysis of Monascus pigments in meat products.