Determination of sodium benzoate in food products by fluorescence polarization immunoassay

A rapid and sensitive fluorescence polarization immunoassay (FPIA), based on a polyclonal antibody, has been developed for the detection of sodium benzoate in spiked samples. The immunogen and fluorescein-labeled analyte conjugate were successfully synthesized, and the tracer was purified by TLC. Under the optimal assay conditions, the FPIA shows a detection range of 0.3-20.0 μg mL(-1) for sodium benzoate with a detection limit of 0.26 μg mL(-1) in the borate buffer. In addition, the IC₅₀ value was 2.48 μg mL(-1), and the cross-reactivity of the antibodies with ten structurally and functionally related analogs were detected respectively. Four kinds of food samples (energy drink, candy, ice sucker, RIO(TM) cocktail) were selected to evaluate the application of FPIA in real systems. The recoveries were 96.68-106.55% in energy drink; 95.78-100.80% in candy, 86.97-102.70% in ice sucker, and 103.58-109.87% in benzoate contained sample RIO(TM) cocktail, and coefficients of variation of this method were all lower than 11.25%. Comparing with the detection results of HPLC, the developed FPIA has comparative performance in the real sample determination. The results suggest that the FPIA developed in this study is a rapid, convenient and simple method, which is suitable to be used as a screening tool for homogeneous detection of sodium benzoate in food products.