Simultaneous estimation of colorants Sunset Yellow and Tartrazine in food products by RP-HPLC

Abstract

An accurate, rapid and sensitive RP-HPLC method was developed and validated to simultaneously estimate sunset yellow and tartrazine in food products. Analysis was performed using waters 1515 isocratic HPLC system (pump); A Waters 2487 dual wavelength detector was used for analysis with a Waters Breeze version 3.3 data station for data collection and processing. Separation was achieved using a Phenomenex C18 column, (250 × 4.6mm, 5µ), A mixture of 50 mM potassium dihydrogen orthophosphate buffer (adjusted to pH 7.5): acetonitrile (80: 20v/v) was pumped at 0.7 mL/min for separation. The eluents were monitored at 244 nm. A solution containing 0.5gm of both Sunset yellow and Tartrazine were prepared from a commercially available food product and then used for evaluation. 15µg/ml solution of riboflavin was used as internal standard. The developed method was validated as per ICH guidelines. The separation with the above said conditions gave a sharp and symmetric peak. Linearity for Tartrazine and Sunset yellow were observed in the concentration range of 0.5 – 3.0 µg/mL for both with a correlation of 0.999. The recoveries were found to be 85.5 and 83.3 % respectively. In conclusion a simple, sensitive and rapid RP HPLC method was developed for simultaneous estimation of Tartrazine and Sunset yellow in food products.