Abstract
In a collaborative study, an automated method for the determination of niacin and niacinamide in cereal products was compared with the official final action microbiological (43.121–43.125) and chemical (43.044–43.046) methods. Ten samples of cereal products, including enriched flour, yeast-leavened baked products, fortified breakfast cereals, and baked pet food products, were submitted to 14 laboratories. Nine laboratories reported values by the automated method, 6 reported values by the microbiological method, and 7 reported values by the chemical method. The results from the microbiological method were not subjected to analysis of variance because of the unusually large between-laboratory variation. The between-laboratory coefficients of variation for the automated and chemical methods were 10.90 and 10.18%, on the basis of results from 7 and 4 laboratories, respectively. There was no significant (p>0.05) difference between methods when results from the 4 laboratories who used both methods were compared. The automated chemical method has been adopted as official first action.
