Simultaneous Analysis of Ursolic Acid and Oleanolic Acid in Guava Leaves Using QuEChERS-Based Extraction Followed by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography

In this paper, a novel method of QuEChERS-based extraction coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography has been developed for the simultaneous determination of ursolic acid (UA) and oleanolic acid (OA) in guava leaves. The QuEChERS-based extraction parameters, including the amount of added salt, vortex-assisted extraction time, and absorbent amount, and the chromatographic conditions were investigated for the analysis of UA and OA in guava leaves. Under the optimized conditions, the method showed good linearity over a range of 1-320 μg mL-1, with correlation coefficients above 0.999. The limits of detection of UA and OA were 0.18 and 0.36 μg mL-1, respectively. The intraday and interday precision were below 1.95 and 2.55%, respectively. The accuracies of the UA and OA determinations ranged from 97.4 to 111.4%. The contents of UA and OA in the guava leaf samples were 2.50 and 0.73 mg g-1, respectively. These results demonstrate that the developed method is applicable to the simultaneous determination of UA and OA in guava leaves.