Quality Evaluation of Fritillaria thunbergii by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography Fingerprinting Coupled with Multicomponent Quantitative Analysis

摘要

Medicinal Zhebeimu refers to the dried bulb of the plant Fritillaria thunbergii, which belongs to the family Liliaceae. Their main production sites are in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Anhui Provinces, with alkaloids as the main components. In this study, according to Chinese Pharmacopoeia, different mobile phases were investigated. Because most alkaloids in Fritillaria do not have UV absorption, evaporative light scattering detection (ELSD) was used instead of UV to produce the HPLC-ELSD spectra for five F. thunbergii samples and other samples, e.g. F. chuanxiensis, F. anhuiensis, and F. ussuriensis. Comparison showed significant differences exist among these species. There was no significant difference between the F. thunbergii samples produced in Zhejiang, which clustered together in both the cluster analyses. However, the F. thunbergii samples produced in Nantong, Jiangsu and the F. thunbergii samples produced in Zhejiang were separated in the clustering chart, which may be caused by different cultivation environments. The obtained results showed that the combination of quantitative analysis and chromatographic fingerprint analysis can be readily utilized for quality control purposes, offering a comprehensive strategy for quality evaluation of F. thunbergii and related products.