Abstract: Several different extraction procedures including perchloric acid extraction, boiling water extraction and boiling magnesium sulfate solution extraction were studied for the extraction of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and adenosine monophosphate (AMP) from the royal jelly. Among these methods, the extraction with 5% perchloric acid at below 4 ℃ was the optimum extraction method. A simple, fast and sensitive ultra-performance liquid chromatographic (UPLC) method was developed for the determination of ATP, ADP and AMP in royal jelly. The separation was achieved within 4 min using a BEH Shield RP18 column (100 mm×2.1 mm, 1.7 μm) with 50 mmol/L monoammonium phosphate solution (pH 6.5) and acetonitrile as the mobile phase. The spiked recoveries of ATP, ADP and AMP were 84.1%-94.3%、86.2%-93.7% and 91.0%-104.3%, respectively. The relative standard deviations were less than 10%. This method was successfully applied to the analysis of some royal jelly samples from beekeepers and markets for the investigation of distribution of ATP, ADP and AMP in royal jelly samples.

Key words: adenosine phosphates, extraction , royal jelly, ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC)