A simple and rapid method was developed for determination of solanesol in tobacco by RP-HPLC and the saponification process was optimized. The solanesol content was quantitatively determined with the external standard method. The results indicated that the optimum saponification process was as follows: KOH -methanol solution 0.5 mol/L, of saponification temperature 30 ℃, and the saponification time 30 minutes. The method had good linearity with correlation coefficient of 0.9999. The limit of detection based on signal-to-noise ratio of 3 was 27.4 ng. The recovery of solanesol in tobacco was 99% with RSD of 0.41%.
