Determination of Quercetin and Luteolin in Paprika Samples by Voltammetry and Partial Least Squares Calibration

Quercetin and luteolin are flavonoids with beneficious properties, which are present in paprika. In this work, both have been determined in paprika by using electrochemistry combined with chemometrics. The electrochemical oxidation mechanisms of both analytes have been studied through sampled direct current (DC) voltammetry, differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) and Square Wave Voltammetry (SWV), making use of a glassy carbon electrode. The final technique selected for the quantification was DPV due to its high repeatability with respect SWV. The chemical variables and the instrumental parameters were optimized and the final conditions employed were ethanol: water (20:80), 0.75moldm(-3) of HCl, and a pulse amplitude of 50mV. Due to the facts that oxidation potential of both analytes were quite similar, their DPV peaks were overlapped, and also because the analytes interaction during the electrochemical process causes a non-additivity of the signals, they could not be quantified separately by direct measurement of peak intensity. For this reason, a chemometric algorithm was applied (partial least squares (PLS) regression in its modality PLS-2). In the case of validation samples, appropriate sets of calibration and validation were built and good results were obtained. This methodology was applied to real paprika samples and the results were similar to those obtained with a HPLC method previously reported.