A novel electroanalytical method is proposed for the determination of Sudan I in hot chili powder. Sudan I was firstly pre-concentrated by adsorption and then electroreduced at the electrochemically activated glassy carbon electrode (AGCE). A linear relationship between the reduction current and concentration of Sudan I was obtained over the range from 2.4 x 10(-6) mol/L to 1.8 X 10(-5) mol/L with a correlation coefficient of 0.9981. The detection limit was estimated to be about 7.1 X 10(-7) mol/L. (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.