Fast, short-column separation and fluorometric determination of monosodium glutamate in foods.

In a simple and fast procedure, monosodium glutamate in food products is first separated by a short ion exchange column and subsequently determined fluorometrically with fluorescamine. An average recovery of 90.8% with a standard deviation of plus or minus 6.67% was obtained for added monosodium glutamate in a series of 8 products. As little as 0.05% monosodium glutamate can be determined. The method is faster than the official method and saves 5 hr/determination.