Different Extraction Methods of Colchicine from Flowers of Daylily

Abstract

The news media and network information often reported that " fresh daylily are toxic". The aim of this study was to extract colchicine from fresh daylily by traditional organic solvent extraction (OSE) and Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) respectively. The colchicine was analyzed by High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS).The daylily flowers were extracted with different solvents such as 95% methanol, 95% ethanol, petroleum ether and methylene chloride, and supercritical fluid extraction. The extracts were analyzed by HPLC-PDA and colchicine could not be detected. However, the analysis of trace amounts of petroleum ether and methylene chloride extracts of the daylily flowers by LC/MS/MS can detect trace colchicines. It was shown that the colchicine was extracted with petroleum ether/dichloromethane, and then analyzed by LC/MS/MS to determine the colchicine content effectively. The recovery rate of this analytical method is 58% and the minimum detectable limit is 0.1 ppb.