Research progress in correlation between commodity specification level and quality of Polygala tenuifolia / 中草药

ABSTRACT

The quality of Chinese herbal medicine is an important prerequisite for ensuring clinical efficacy and safety. The current commodity specification of medicinal herbs is the summary of the traditional Chinese medicine practitioners' experience of "assessing the quality by distinguishing the features of traditional Chinese medicinal materials". However, with the continuous introduction and acclimatization and large-scale cultivation of wild medicinal herbs, the traits of some medicinal herbs have changed greatly compared with the previous one, resulting in that the market circulation specifications of these medicinal herbs is inconsistent with the current commodity specification. In this paper, by consulting the modern monographs, literatures and so on, we analyzed the market circulation specifications being implementing of Polygalae Radix, combined with the modern quality evaluation methods to explore the effects of strains and base, origin and climate, growth duration and harvesting period and medicinal parts on the quality of P. tenuifolia. This paper reveals the correlation between the traits and quality of Polygalae Radix, furthermore, provides the theoretical basis for setting up the commodity specifications of Polygalae Radix, and determines the future research direction of P. tenuifolia quality assessment.