A New Extractant for Concurrent Estimation of Nicotine, Reducing Sugars and Chlorides in Tobacco Cured Leaf

Abstract

The objective of the study is to develop simple, inexpensive, and less hazardous extractant for simultaneous extraction of nicotine, reducing sugars, and chlorides in tobacco cured leaf. The currently used reference extractant for nicotine, reducing sugars, and chlorides comprises 20% aqueous methanol +5% acetic acid+2 cc charcoal in 15:4:1 ratio. As the methanol, a major component of this reference extractant, is hazardous and expensive, we proposed and evaluated a simple extractant involving 10%acetic acid for assaying nicotine, reducing sugars, and chlorides in comparison to reference extractant. The sample data (n = 30) sets of both the extractants [proposed (x) and reference (y)] were subjected to Passing &Bablok’s regression analyses. The regression models so obtained for reducing sugars (y = 0.594 + 1.021x), nicotine (y = 0.044 + 0.8877x), and chlorides (y = 0.057 + 1.131x) were validated by CUSUM test for linearity. The test indicated that there was no significant deviation from linearity for nicotine, reducing sugars, and chlorides. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient (ρ) with P < .0001at 95% confidence interval also showed high correlation between the proposed and the reference extractants for Nicotine (0.993), reducing sugars (0.982), and chlorides (0.972). Analyses of the data sets by Youden plot method showed congregation of data points near to diagonal reference line and a few wild points. This type of data points distribution indicates the high degree of comparability between the proposed and the reference extractants for nicotine, reducing sugars, and chlorides in tobacco cured leaf. The estimated cost of extraction was less with the proposed extractant. It is suggested that the proposed extractant (10%acetic acid + 4 cc activated charcoal suspension) being simple and less expensive be used as an alternative to the hazardous methanol-based extractant.