Simultaneous kinetic spectrometric determination of three flavonoid antioxidants in fruit with the aid of chemometrics

•Quantifying three anti-carcinogenic flavonoids, catechin, quercetin and naringenin.•Yellow product was obtained from reduction of Cu(II) to Cu(I) by the flavonoids.•Chemometrics was used to process overlapped kinetic spectra.•Simultaneous assay of three anti-carcinogenic flavonoids in fruit samples.

A simple, inexpensive and sensitive kinetic spectrophotometric method was developed for the simultaneous determination of three anti-carcinogenic flavonoids: catechin, quercetin and naringenin, in fruit samples. A yellow chelate product was produced in the presence neocuproine and Cu(I) – a reduction product of the reaction between the flavonoids with Cu(II), and this enabled the quantitative measurements with UV–vis spectrophotometry. The overlapping spectra obtained, were resolved with chemometrics calibration models, and the best performing method was the fast independent component analysis (fast-ICA/PCR (Principal component regression)); the limits of detection were 0.075, 0.057 and 0.063 mg L−1 for catechin, quercetin and naringenin, respectively. The novel method was found to outperform significantly the common HPLC procedure.

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