High-performance liquid chromatographic determination of ferulic acid in wheat milling fractions as a measure of bran contamination.

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method was developed for selective determination of ferulic acid in 7 min in the extracts from wheat flour and ground whole wheat at typical levels of 50 and 500 micrograms/g, respectively. Recovery of 99.9% was obtained when ferulic acid was extracted into dilute sulfuric acid, followed by enzymatic treatment of the extract with an alpha-amylase preparation. The chromatographic system included a 100-mm column packed with Hypersil 5 micron reversed-phase ODS operating isocratically with 12% methanol-citrate buffer (pH 5.4) mixture. The selectivity and sensitivity of both ultraviolet diode array and fluorescence detectors was investigated. The optimum wavelengths selected were 320 nm and 312 nm/418 nm respectively. Relative standard deviations of the analytical procedure were 2.43% and 5.10% for whole wheat and flour samples, respectively.