Simultaneous determination of scopolamine, hyoscyamine and anisodamine in in vitro growth media of selected Solanaceae hairy roots by CE method

An electrophoretic method for fast separation of three tropane alkaloids (hyoscyamine, anisodamine and scopolamine) was presented. The substances were complete resolved in less than one minute due to utilization of relatively short capillary (20.2cm effective length) and high voltage (25kV). Detector probing frequency was found among the parameters that significantly affected the detection sensitivity. The performed experiments showed insufficient available probing frequency of used commercial spectrophotometric detector according to capillary electrophoresis (CE) separation potential. Under the optimized conditions the background electrolyte (BGE) was composed of 20mM Tris, 6mM HCl and 20mM NaCl (pH 8.50). All analyses were carried out in fused silica capillaries of 50μm (inner diameter) and 31.2cm (total capillary length). Samples were injected hydrodynamically (5s; 3.45kPa) without any sample preparation step and separation was performed at 25kV. The elaborated method was applied in plant cultures growth media analysis after incubation with hairy roots of selected Solanaceae species. The performed experiments proved the usefulness of CE in quality control of biotechnological processes.