Ultrasound-Assisted Saponification Coupled with Gas Chromatography-Flame Ionization Detection for the Determination of Phytosterols from Passion Fruit Seed Oil

An ultrasound-assisted saponification (UAS) method for the determination of phytosterols (campesterol, β-sitosterol and stigmasterol) in passion fruit seed oil, followed by gas chromatography with flame ionization detection, was developed and validated. Under the optimum conditions, good linearity with correlation coefficients higher than 0.99 was obtained for all analytes. The recoveries for the proposed approach were between 103 and 107%, the limits of quantification were between 70 and 180 μg kg-1 and the precision values expressed in terms of relative standard deviations (RSD) were lower...