Quality Evaluation of Mori Cortex from Different Producing Areas Based on Entropy Weight-TOPSIS Method / 中国实验方剂学杂志

ABSTRACT

ObjectiveTo evaluate the quality of Mori Cortex from different producing areas by the entropy weight-technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution（TOPSIS）， and to provide a new evaluation method for the quality control of Mori Cortex. MethodAccording to the five key indexes of color， thickness， texture， powdery and cortex remain， a subjective scoring table was designed to evaluate the appearance of Mori Cortex. High performance liquid chromatography（HPLC） was used to determine the fingerprint and the contents of multiple components（mulberroside A， chlorogenic acid， oxyresveratrol， mulberroside C， sanggenone D， sanggenone C， morusin）， and chemometrics was used to explore the differential components of Mori Cortex from different habitats. On this basis， TOPSIS was used to comprehensively evaluate the quality of Mori Cortex from different habitats， and SPSS 22.0 software was used to carry out bivariate correlation analysis between thickness and appearance color with contents of seven components of Mori Cortex. ResultThose with lighter color， thicker root bark， tougher texture， sufficient powder and less cortex remain scored higher， and the top five were all from Anhui. The established fingerprint and determination methods were stable and reliable. Partial least squares-discriminant analysis（PLS-DA） screened three components with the variable importance in the projection（VIP） value>1（mulberroside A， sanggenone D， sanggenone C）， which made an important contribution to the difference in the origin of Mori Cortex. Correlation analysis showed that there was a significantly positive correlation between mulberroside C with lightness value（L*） and total chromaticity value（E*ab） and mulberroside A with yellow-blue value（b*）（P<0.05， P<0.01）， a significantly negative correlation between sanggenone C with b* and between morusin with L*（P<0.05， P<0.01）. And there was a significantly negative correlation between mulberroside A， chlorogenic acid， and morusin with thickness（P<0.01）， a clearly negative correlation between sanggenone D with thickness（P<0.05）， a significantly positive correlation between sanggenone C with thickness（P<0.01）. TOPSIS comprehensive scores showed that the samples from Anhui had a good score and ranked high. ConclusionThere are great differences in the quality of Mori Cortex from different habitats， and those with the close habitats show similar characteristics in appearance and component content， and lighter color and less cortex were positively correlated with the quality. Among them， the quality of Mori Cortex from Anhui is relatively good.