Development and Optimization of an HPLC-PDA Method for the Determination of Major Cannabinoids in Hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) Essential Oil Obtained by Hydrodistillation

Abstract The use of hemp ( Cannabis sativa L.) essential oil (EO) has shown a significant increase in interest and during recent years. In this work, new simple reversed-phase HPLC with photodiode-array (PDA) detector method been developed optimized for the detection quantification cannabidiolic acid (CBDA), cannabidiol (CBD), cannabinol (CBN), Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC), Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinolic (THCA). cannabinoids were extracted from EO by partition n -hexane water, followed sonication, evaporation to dryness under nitrogen, reconstitution methanol:chloroform (9:1, v/v) before HPLC-PDA analysis. shows good selectivity robustness, linearity range 0.5–100 mg L −1 R 2 higher than 0.999 all analyzed, LOD 0.11–0.16 , LOQ 0.35–0.48 . recovery was between 78 100% intra-day intermediate precision, expressed as relative standard deviation (RSD), < 4% 4–10%, respectively.