The retention of 44 barbituric acid derivatives was determined on a porous graphitized carbon column using water-tetrahydrofuran mixtures as eluents. Good linear relationships were found between the logk values and the organic mobile phase concentration in the eluent. The slope and intercept values of the relationship were correlated with the physicochemical parameters of the barbituric acid derivatives by means of canonical correlation analysis. The results indicate that the electronic parameters exerted the highest impact on the retention with the effect of hydrophobicity being negligible. The data indicates that the retention mechanism of a porous graphitized carbon column considerably deviates from that of traditional reversed-phase column although the eluent systems are identical.