A chromatographic method was developed for cholesterol determination in feed for ruminants using response surface methodology. Among the five approaches of sample preparation methods tested, the saponification of the sample without heating presented less interference in the gas chromatography. The method presented a relative standard deviation (RSD) of 4.3%, recoveries between 84 and 87% and detection limit of 0.001 mg of cholesterol per g of feed.
GC; extraction; validation
