Determination of total alkaloid in tobacco by a safe and improved method based on KSCN

In this paper, an analytical method based on a chemical reaction between KSCN and sodium dichloroisocyanurate-dihydrate in a buffer system was applied to quantify the total alkaloid in tobacco. The proposed method replaced the No. 35 Recommended Method of CORESTA (CRM 35) with the advantage that this method is safer compared to the CRM35 which uses KCN, a highly toxic chemical. In addition, compared to the current national standard method YC/T 468-2013, the buffer solution preparation was optimized to improve the detection efficiency. The validation results indicated that the new method met the test requirements, and the results were consistent with the ones obtained from the CORESTA CRM 35 and the YC/T 468-2013 methods.