The purpose of this work was to develop a procedure based on protein analysis by free zone capillaryelectrophoresis (FZCE) that can be used in the determination of smoked paprika "Piment&
oacute;n de La
Vera" adulteration with paprika elaborated from varieties of pepper foreign to the "La Vera" region, incentral western Spain. Two autochthonous varieties of pepper, Jaranda and Bola, and the varietyPapri Queen, foreign to the "La Vera" region, were used in the study. Se
veral aqueous solutions forsolubilization of the methanol-soluble proteins were tested, and the FZCE conditions of capillarydimensions, FZCE buffer concentrations, and detection wavelengths were optimized. On the basisof the results, 30% (v/v) acetonitrile was adopted as the suspending solution for routine analysis,and the optimal FZCE parameters were 75
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m inner diameter and 57 cm total length capillaries,8.75 mM phosphate/20.6 mM tetraborate as run buffer, and 256 nm as detection wavelength. Thismethod was found to give excellent repeatability of the corrected migration time (CMT) with coefficientsof variation (RSD %;
n = 5) of <1% for most of the proteinaceous compounds analyzed and showedgreater effectiveness in discriminating paprika varieties than the SDS-PAGE technique. Four peaksfound in the FZCE electropherograms were investigated as a basis for detecting and estimating theadulteration of smoked paprika with paprika elaborated from the Papri Queen variety. The adulterationdetection limits varied from 5 to 40% of the Papri Queen variety within a satisfactory working rangeof mixture (5-80%) sufficiently large to co
ver the adulteration levels of interest. The use of peak 6as a marker for determining adulteration gave the best results, with an adulteration detection limit of5-10% (w/w).Keywords: Paprika; adulteration; protein profile; FZCE