Quality Evaluation of Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch. in Different Harvest Periods Based on Combinative Methods of HPLC Specific Chromatogram, Multi-Component Assay, and Chemometrics / 中国药学杂志

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVEP To evaluate comprehensively the quality of Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch. in different harvest periods by chemometric analysis based on the HPLC specific chromatogram and multi-component assay. METHODS: The similarity was analyzed with "Similarity Evaluation System for Chromatographic Fingerprint of Chinese Materia Medica 2012". t-test, correlation analysis, clustering analysis(HCA), principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) were used for data analysis. RESULTS: Twenty-one peaks were selected as common peaks of the fingerprint. The similarity of the samples were above 0.9. The contents of liquiritin, glycyrrhizic acid, liquiritin apioside, isoliquiritin apioside, isoliquiritin, neoisoliquiritin, echinatin, and liquiritigenin were determined.There were some differences in the quality of Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch. in different harvest periods, with liquiritin apioside, neoisoliquiritin and echinatin as the main compounds of difference. CONCLUSION: Autumn is confirmed as the best harvesting period of Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch. by chemometric analysis. It is suggested that liquiritin apioside should be used as the key quality control indicator for evaluating Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch.in different harvest periods.