Chemometrics-assisted high performance liquid chromatography-diode array detection strategy to solve varying interfering patterns from different chromatographic columns and sample matrices for beverage analysis

• A novel HPLC-DAD method assisted with second-order calibration was developed.
• The method was employed to solve varying interfering patterns for beverage analysis.
• The method was applied to determine six co-eluted colorants in different kinds of beverages.
• The results of the proposed method were consistent with those of the HPLC-UV method.
• The method proved to be accurate, economical and universal.

This work reports a chemometrics-assisted high performance liquid chromatography-diode array detection (HPLC-DAD) strategy to solve varying interfering patterns from different chromatographic columns and sample matrices for the rapid simultaneous determination of six synthetic colorants in five kinds of beverages with little sample pretreatment. The investigation was performed using two types of LC columns under the same elution conditions. Although analytes using different columns have different co-elution patterns that appear more seriously in complex backgrounds, all colorants were properly resolved by alternating trilinear decomposition (ATLD) method and accurate chromatographic elution profiles, spectral profiles as well as relative concentrations were obtained. The results were confirmed by those obtained from traditional HPLC-UV method at a particular wavelength and the results of both methods were consistent with each other. All results demonstrated that the proposed chemometrics-assisted HPLC-DAD method is accurate, economical and universal, and can be promisingly applied to solve varying interfering patterns from different chromatographic columns and sample matrices for the analysis of complex food samples.