Determination of rutin, quercetin, and chlorogenic acid in mulberry leaves by capillary zone electrophoresis

A simple, rapid, and accurate capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) technique has been developed for the separation and determination of rutin, quercetin, and chlorogenic acid in mulberry leaves collected in different periods. The effects of various parameters, such as buffer concentration, pH value, and proportion of methanol on electrophoresis behaviors of the analytes, rutin, quercetin, and chlorogenic acid, were investigated. After a series of optimization, the separation of the three compounds in mulberry leaves was achieved successfully within 12 min in the buffer solution of 40 mmol (.) L-1 borax (pH 9.3). The linearity, limit of quantification, reproducibility, and recovery for all were satisfactory. The optimized CZE method proposed here has been satisfactorily employed to analyze real samples of mulberry leaves.