Simultaneous Determination of Five Phytohormones in Mungbean Sprouts of China by Micellar Electrokinetic Chromatography

A simple and rapid micellar electrokinetic chromatography method was developed for simultaneous determination of indole-3-acetic acid, indole-3-butyric acid, gibberellic acid, abscisic acid and naphthylacetic acid in mungbean sprouts for monitoring plant growth and development. The effects of several parameters related to the separation and determination were investigated in detail. The analysis was carried out using 10 mM borax, 10 mM sodium dihydrogen phosphate, 90 mM sodium dodecyl sulfate and 5% acetonitrile as running buffer (pH 9.0). Under optimum conditions, the method demonstrated good performance concerning linearity (r, 0.9954-0.9991), precision (0.77-4.97%), the method limit of detection (LOD) and the method limit of quantitation (LOQ) (LOD, 0.011-0.177 mg/kg; LOQ, 0.035-0.590 mg/kg) and accuracy (83.62-102.56%). The results confirmed that the method is rapid, convenient and of low cost for the determination of the phytohormones.