High-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometric analysis of alkaloids extracted from seeds of Erythrina herbacea.

A sensitive, reverse-phase HPLC-MS method for the analysis of the alkaloids of Erythrina has been developed. The method is based on the use small amounts of crude extracts (20 mg) and is sufficiently sensitive to detect the presence of the typical alkaloids, such as erysodine, erysovine, erythraline, erysopine and the hexoside of erysopine, that are representative of the title species.