Investigating the amount of coumarin in cinnamon samples as an indicator of safety and authenticity by liquid chromatography

Cinnamon is one of the world's oldest, important and commonly used spices in food industries. Since cinnamon has different varieties which they have diffident qualities, therefore, development of methods for characterization of different variates and evaluation of quality of cinnamon sample is very important. In this research a simple, fast and sensitive method based on liquid chromatography for determination of coumarin as authenticity and safety index in cinnamon samples has been developed. first, several factors influencing the extraction efficiency of coumarin including composition of extraction solvent and type of sample agitation were studied and optimized. Under the optimal conditions, good linear behavior over the investigated concentration ranges (0.2-500 mg/L) with good correlation of determination, R2> 0.996 were obtained. The relative standard deviations (RSDs) based on six replicate determinations at 100 mg/L level of coumarin was less than 6 percent. In studied samples concentration of coumarin was obtained in the range of 6.1-227.7 mg kg-1. Also, between color and coumarin amount of the samples there is positive significant correlation and samples with dark brown color have higher levels of coumarin