Separation and identification of curcuminoids in turmeric powder by HPLC using phenyl column

Natural products including curcuminoids are used globally for treating several diseases. Curcumin, demethoxycurcumin and bis-demethoxycurcumin are the major constituents of Curcuma longa L. A rapid, selective, efficient and reproducible HPLC method for the separation and identification of curcuminoids was described using a Sunniest PhE (phenyl) column (250 x 4.6 mm, 5.0 mu m). These constituents were separated within 10.5 min using acetonitrile-methanol-water (40 : 20 : 40, v/v) as the mobile phase with 1.0 mL min(-1) flow rate and 360 nm detection. The capacity factors (k, 4.2 to 4.9), separation factors (alpha, 1.07 to 1.10) and resolution factors (R-s, 1.07 to 2.05) indicated a good separation of the compounds. Attempts have also been made to describe the separation mechanism of the reported method. The extraction of the curcuminoids from turmeric powder was 2.1, 0.46 and 0.1% for curcumin, demethoxycurcumin and bis-demethoxycurcumin, respectively. The reported method was considered to be novel due to base-line separation of curcuminoids, with sharp peaks and low LOD in comparison to the reported methods in the literature. Briefly, the described method may be used for the quality control of food stuffs and identification of curcuminoids in other natural products.