In this work, a simple and rapid spectrophotometric method, which is based on the fact that Iron(Ⅱ) -gluconic acid complex as a kind of reducing agent deterioration of indigo carmine dyes, was developed to detect gluconic acid in food. Under the optimal experimental condition, a linear range of 3.6 M to 900 M was obtained for gluconic acid with a limit of detection of 1.1 μM. The colorimetric method was rapid and robust with a low cost and can be applied to gluconic acid detection in food samples.


Yifeng Lan, Lixiang Zuo, Yangyang Zhou, Yanli Wei and Chuan Dong