Determination of free phenolic acids from leaves within different colored maize

Along with other plant parts, maize leaves are widely used for making fermented food for cattle, known as silage. Since there have been only a few reports on studies concerning the extraction and determination of phenolic acids from maize leaves, the main goal of this experiment was to evaluate free phenolic acids content in leaves of fifteen different maize inbred lines. Reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC), equipped with photodiode array detector (DAD), was performed. Under the optimization of chromatographic conditions, referring to short time of samples preparation, small quantities of solvent and direct injection of extract into HPLC, phenolic acids (i.e. gallic, protocatechuic, caffeic, p-coumaric and ferulic acid) were successfully separated in less than 25 min, indicating that the method can be applied for routine analysis. The efficiency and validation of the method was evaluated by measuring the rate of parameters: linearity, limit of detection and quantification, accuracy and precision. Results obtained revealed that the most abundant free phenolic acid was p-coumaric acid (23.57 ?g g-1 dry weight), followed by ferulic and caffeic acids (21.27 and 20.78 ?g g-1 dry weight, respectively). Principal Component Analysis (PCA) revealed the existence of link.