Quantitative Determination of Tea Saponin in Tea Seed Meal by High Performance Liquid Chromatography

In this work,tea saponin was purified by reversed-phase ODS-A column chromatography from degreased coldpressed tea seed meal for use as a reference standard in the quantitative determination of tea saponin by HPLC and identified by UV absorption spectrometry,FTIR and mass spectrometry.HPLC separation was achieved with reversed-phase ODS column and acetonitrile-water as eluent(an initial acetonitrile concentration of 20% held for 5 min,then increased to 100% in 5 min,and finally decreased back to the initial value) at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min in gradient mode.UV detection was carried out at 215 nm.Under these conditions,symmetric peaks,desired retention time and good separation between tea saponin and impurity were observed.