Development of a Method to Quantify Lysine in Small Amount of Rice Grain

A lysine determination method for low quantity of rice was modified from the original Dye-Binding Lysine (DBL) method used in the national standard in China [GB 4801-84, 1984]. By making use of the property that lysine does not bind to the crocein orange G dye after treated with propionic anhydride, the amount of lysine in rice samples could be determined directly by calculating the difference between the absorbances of the treated and the untreated samples. Various commercial rice samples were purchased from market and evaluated. Several methods were tested by varying both the sizes of the samples and the concentrations of the dye solutions. Results showed that when using 1.284 mM of crocein orange G dye solution and 15.5 mg of sample, the results were most reproducible. The corresponding lysine content in sample were $3.36\;{\pm}\;0.09\;mg/g$ and $3.35\;{\pm}\;0.19\;mg/g$ by traditional method and modified method, respectively. Statistically, there was no significant difference between the results (p>0.05).