Abstract
An ultra performance liquid chromatography tandem TOF mass spectrometric (UPLC-DAD-TOF-MS) fingerprinting method was developed for the quality control and source discrimination of Cortex magnoliae officinalis produced in Zhejiang Province (Wen-Hou-Po). Twelve samples of Wen-Hou-Po collected from two species in five areas in Zhejiang Province of China were used to establish the fingerprint. Data were evaluated statistically using similarity analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and discriminant analysis (DA) in order to establish a similarity standard of fingerprint for quality control of Wen-Hou-Po, then to classify the Wen-Hou-Po samples and to identify key categorizing parameters. The similarity indexes were all above 0.95 between the reference chromatogram and that of each sample. By comparing the UV and MS data with those of the authentic standards and literature, nine main peaks in the fingerprints were identified. The result of hierarchical cluster analysis showed that the samples from two species in five areas could be divided into two distinct groups (the same as the groups of the samples divided by their species) based on their compositional fingerprints. A rapid and convenient discriminant function was then established to discriminate the species of unknown Wen-Hou-Po, and the cross validation result was 100%. In this study, the methods established are reliable, and could be used to evaluate the quality and to identify the species of Wen-Hou-Po in the future.