SUPERCRITICAL-FLUID CHROMATOGRAPHY OF GINKGOLIDE-A, GINKGOLIDE-B, GINKGOLIDE-C AND GINKGOLIDE-J AND BILOBALIDE

Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) can be used to separate the f ive different ginkgo terpenetrilactones occurring in Ginkgo biloba lea f. The separation is carried out at 280 atm on a packed deactivated am inopropyl silica HPLC column with CO2 modified with 12% methanol. The separation is better than what is currently achievable with RP-HPLC. D etection was done with evaporative light scattering (ELSD). The limit of detection was around 10 ng. The method can be used for the analysis of any ginkgo sample that has undergone an SPE clean-up and in some c ases it is useful for samples without prior clean-up. This is due to t he greater selectivity of the SFC separation mechanism relative to the RP-HPLC mechanism.