A simple, easy, and efficient HPTLC method for simultaneous determination of polyamines (putrescine, spermidine, and spermine) in plant tissues

Polyamine analysis has received a lot of attention in recent years because they are important in several physiological processes, including cell proliferation, differentiation, and growth. This study presents the development and validation of a user-friendly and convenient high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) method, using benzoyl chloride as a derivatization agent for the analysis of three abundant polyamines. A comparative study with HPLC-MS/MS was performed to evaluate the putrescine, spermidine, and spermine content of plant tissues. The linear ranges for the determination of putrescine and spermine by HPTLC were lower than those of HPLC-MS/MS. Lower LODs were found for polyamine analysis using HPLC-MS/MS except for spermidine. The Pearson correlation coefficients of the two methods for putrescine, spermidine, and spermine were 0.982, 0.998, and 0.980, respectively, which confirms the applicability of both HPTLC-UV and LC-MS/MS methods. According to these results, the optimized HPTLC-UV method may be used as a practical analytical tool for screening polyamine levels in the horticultural, food, and pharmaceutical industries for quality control purposes.