Application of hydrophilic interaction chromatography in phytochemical analysis

Hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) is a liquid chromatography technique when a polar stationary phases — silica or polar bonded phases and aqueous mobile phase containing amount of a less polar solvent (often acetonitrile) is applied. HILIC is important for the separation of highly polar substances including biologically active compounds, such as drugs, amino acids, peptides, proteins, nucleosides, neurotransmitters, etc. HILIC is also the appropriate method for analysis of plant extract polar components such as carbohydrates, amino acids, peptides, phenolic acids, flavonoids and some alkaloids. Plant extracts are usually multicomponent mixtures of compounds of wide polarity range, which often cannot be analyzed by use of a single separation and detection method because of the high chemical diversity. Good results are obtained by use of coupled method, e.g., reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RP-LC) and HILIC mode separation. The elution order in HILIC is usually opposite to that in RP separations. This orthogonality determines one of the advantages of HILIC — the possibility of creating multidimensional separations. An important feature of HILIC is the improved sensitivity with electrospray mass spectrometry. This is significant for the analysis of components existing in small concentration in multicomponent mixtures. The high acetonitrile content also gives additional advantage of HILIC — faster separations due to the lower viscosity of HILIC eluents compared to standard RP ones. The presented review deals with the optimization of HILIC separations and application of the method for analysis of plant extracts components.