Enrichment and separation of rebaudioside A from stevia glycosides by a novel adsorbent with pyridyl group

The adsorptive capacity and selectivity of a novel adsorbent with pyridyl group toward stevia glycosides were studied. The effect of polarity and physical structure of the sorbent on the selectivity was investigated in detail. Two separation methods were applied in the enrichment of rebaudioside A(RA) . They were selective elution using methanol or ethanol solution as solvent, and dynamic chromatographic separation using pyridyl resin with high selectivity. Results show that the chromatographic separation method can effectively enrich RA from stevia glycoside with high content of ste-vioside.