Development of a capillary electrophoresis method for the determination of soybean proteins in soybean-rice gluten-free dietary products

CE has been applied for the first time to the simultaneous separation of soybean and rice proteins. Treated and untreated capillaries with different effective lengths as well as separation media at different pHs were tested. For that purpose, samples and standard solutions were prepared in 25:75 ACN-water media containing 0.3% v/v acetic acid. The use of an untreated capillary of 50 cm effective length together with an 80 mM borate buffer (pH 8.5) modified with 20% v/v ACN and UV detection at 254 nm were the conditions working the best. These conditions enabled the determination of soybean proteins in gluten-free dietary commercial products elaborated with soybean protein and/or soybean flour and rice flour using the standard additions calibration method. The method was linear up to 26 mg/mL of soybean proteins, the precision (expressed as RSD) was always better than 6%, and recoveries obtained for soybean proteins when spiking commercial products were very close to 100%.