The development and validation of a method for quantification of pigments of interest in marine waters using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) with Diode Array Detection (DAD)

Scottish Marine and Freshwater Science Vol 8 No 12

Diode array detectors (DAD) are widely used for the analysis of complex phytoplankton pigments in marine waters. A spectrum of each peak in the sample is collected, and when compared with that of a reference standard, the presence of a particular pigment can be confirmed or refuted, resulting in an increased confidence in pigment identification over a conventional UV detector. A method was developed and validated using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with a DAD with the aim of replacing the pigment HPLC method using a UV detector. This report describes the development of that method.