Determination of caffeine in the leaves and flowers of Camellia chrysantha by high-performance liquid chromatography with dad detection

Abstract

Caffeine (1,3,7-trimethylxanthine) is naturally found in the leaves, seeds or fruits of over 63 plants species worldwide. It is contained highly in coffee, tea, cacao beverage products. Caffeine showed good effects in enhancing performance and perception of exercise, reducing fatigue and drowsiness, and improving memory and learning effects. Although caffeine intoxications are rare, they showed its unhealthy potential factor, resulting in tachycardia, atrial arrhythmias, convulsions or even coma. Thus, the national standard technical committee has limited the caffeine content in beverage products. In this paper, we present an HPLC method for determination of caffeine. The results show optimal conditions for the rapid analysis of caffeine with high precision and accuracy which are suitable for its determination in the plant. The obtained results revealed that no caffeine is detected in the leaves and flowers of golden camellia (Camellia chrysantha (Hu) Tuyama). Thus, we may suggest that using golden camellia leaves and flowers as natural alternatives to current decaffeinated tea would avoid some unwanted side effects of caffeine.