Capillary electrophoresis: novel tool for simmondsins analysis and its application to jojoba breeding

Jojoba seed, a rich source of liquid wax, contains also a group of closely related glycosides: simmondsin (SM), demethylsimmondsin and didemethylsimmo ndsin (DDS). Four ferulates derivatives of SM and demethylsimmondsin have b een identified and isolated. Growing interest and potential for application of SMs as feed additives calls for efficient and quick analytical methods both for quantitative and qualitative analyses. The HPLC method is commonly used for SMs analysis; however, the presence of stereosomers of ferulates may require more precise, faster and less expensive analytical method, espe cially for animal studies. In this report, it is shown that capillary elect rophoresis (CE) is a powerful separation and quantitation technique that pr ovides high resolving power, short analysis time, and low operational cost for the analysis of SM derivatives. The CE method for analysis of SMs was d eveloped, scrutinized in interlaboratory ring test, and applied to monitori ng the breeding studies. Although CE is not commonly used for analysis of p lant material or agriculture products, it has shown great potential for the analysis substances of interest in biological matrices or profiling metabo lites of physiologically important molecules. The exposure of simmondsin fe rulates (SSFs) to light causes their isomerization, and this effect may be easily quantified by CE. The CE method is also applicable to quality contro l analysis for processing and purification of SMs used as animal feed addit ive. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.