Vitamin E Isomers from Latex Timber Clone Rubber Tree Characterized by Ultra Violet and High Performance Liquid Chromatography

AbstractTocopherols and tocotrienols are groups of soluble lipid compound summarized under the term vitamin E. Naturally, vitamin E comprises of tocopherols and tocotrienols which constitute the majority of vitamin E. Tocopherol is composed of eight vitamers, namely: α-, β-, γ-, and δ-, while their four corresponding unsaturated congeners tocotrienol consist of α-, β-, γ-, and δ- respectively. In this study, tocotrienols together with tocopherols was detected and analyzed from rubber tree's latex. Three different rubbers Latex Timber Clone (LTC) of RRIM 2012, RRIM 2025 and RRIM 2026 were used as study samples. Vitamin E extraction from fresh latex was performed using lipid extraction method using chloroform (CH3Cl) and methanol (CH4) with the ratio 5:1. For characterization, UV-Visible Spectrophotometer (UV-Vis) and Normal Phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography (NP-HPLC) were used. From the findings, there were four vitamin E isomers that are naturally present in this clone rubber latex, namely α-tocopherol, α-tocotrienol, γ-tocotrienol and δ-tocotrienol. This study also found γ-tocotrienol as the most abundant molecular variant of vitamin E in Hevea latex, while RRIM 2012 contain the highest yield of vitamin E of the LTC series