Ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatographic determination of biogenic amines and polyamines in wine and other alcoholic beverages

An optimised ion-pair reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method with automatic o-phthalaldehyde post-column derivatization and spectrofluorometric detection for the same-run separation and quantification of 12 biogenic amines and polyamines in alcoholic beverages has been validated. The reliability of the method was satisfactory in terms of linearity (from 0.5 to 15 mg/l), precision (relative standard deviation below 5%), recovery (from 98.7 to 101.1%), and sensitivity (detection limit between 0.03 and 0.06 mg/l). The automatic accomplishment of the derivatization step reduces time and effort of analysis, especially thanks to the easy preparation of the sample. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.