Mrs/Miss Berry,

Accounting for the fact, that there are more then 6000 N-containing naturally occurring products classified as “alkaloids”; and a separate (not well defined) number non-O containing substances, together with a large scale of synthetic derivatives based on known molecular scaffold of natural alkaloids, it is obvious that extraction, of such as substances need a large scale of experimental conditions, because of these derivatives belong to a large scale of chemical classes, exhibiting in parallel a large scale of chemical and physical properties. Such as 'large scale' of experimental conditions is ensured employing LC-based methods as sample separation step to MS analysis. The GC-based method do not tolerate a so large experimental variation of conditions, despite its applicability to many alkaloids of different chemical classes.

Dear Prof. Ivanova,

Thank you so much for explicitly explaining the difference! 

I would like to ask this further:

For a certain class of alkaloids (e.g. quinazoline alkaloids), if both LC and GC-based methods are available in the literature, which of the two would be easier to reproduce? --i.e. I would like to know about the precision and reproducible nature of the two methods.

Best regards.