A simple UV-Vis spectrophotometric method for determination of β-carotene content in raw carrot, sweet potato and supplemented chicken meat nuggets

A simple, rapid and low cost analytical method for the determination of β-carotene content in four different food categories is developed and validated. This method is based on solvent extraction followed by UV-Vis spectrometric detection. Target compound was extracted with four different solvents, in which acetone appears to be an excellent extractant as recovery of the analyte at 1 μg/g concentration in spiked samples was in the range of 67.8-98.8%, with relative standard deviation (RSD) ranging between 4.8 and 6.6%. Intra- and inter-day assay precisions of the method at 0.1, 1.0 and 5.0 μg/g concentrations ranged in between 3.4 and 8.9%. The linearities for β- carotene in the pure acetone, raw carrot, sweet potato, and fortified raw and cooked chicken meat nuggets were 0.994, 0.995, 0.990, 0.984 and 0.984, respectively. For robustness, the analytical method was applied to 24 samples of four different food categories namely carrot, sweet potato and carrot and sweet potato supplemented chicken meat nuggets.