Determination of indole-3-acetic acid and indole-3-butyric acid in mung bean sprouts using high performance liquid chromatography with immobilized Ru(bpy)32+–KMnO4 chemiluminescence detection

A novel method for determination of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) and indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) in an extract from mung bean sprouts using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with chemiluminescence (CL) detection is described. The method is based on the CL reaction of auxin (indole-3-acetic acid and indole-3-butyric acid) with acidic potassium permanganate (KMnO4) and tris(2,2′-bipyridyl)ruthenium(II), which was immobilized on the cationic ion-exchange resin. The chromatographic separation was performed on a Nucleosil RP-C18 column (i.d.: 250 mm × 4.6 mm, particle size: 5 μm, pore size: 100) with an isocratic mobile phase consisting of methanol–water–acetic acid (45:55:1, v/v/v). At a flow rate of 1.0 mL min−1, the total run time was 20 min. Under the optimal conditions, the linear ranges were 5.0 × 10−8 to 5.0 × 10−6 g mL−1 and 5.0 × 10−7 to 1.0 × 10−5 g mL−1 for IAA and IBA, respectively. The detection limits were 2.0 × 10−8 g mL−1 and 2.0 × 10−7 g mL−1 for IAA and IBA, respectively. The relative standard deviation (RSD) of intra-day were 3.1% and 2.3% (n = 11) for 2 × 10−6 g mL−1 IAA and 2 × 10−6 g mL−1 IBA; The relative standard deviations of inter-day precision were 6.9% and 4.9% for 2 × 10−6 g mL−1 IAA and 2 × 10−6 g mL−1 IBA. The proposed method had been successfully applied to the determination of auxin in mung bean sprouts.