Discriminating Astragali Radix from Its Adulterants Using HPLC Coupled with Chemometric Clustering Techniques
WEI-WEI DONG1,2,3, DAWN AU4, XIN-WEI CAO3, XIAO-BO LI1 AND DA-JIAN YANG3,4*
1. Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
2. Shenzhen Virtual University Park Postdoc Station, Shenzhen, China
3. State Key Laboratory of Chinese Medicine and Molecular Pharmacology, Shenzhen, China
4. Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
(Received: November 1, 2010; Accepted: July 22, 2011)
ABSTRACT
A simple high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method coupled with principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) was developed for distinguishing Astragali Radix from its adulterants. Five species, including A. membranaceus var. mongolicus, A. membranaceus, H. polybotrys, A. chrysopterus and A. ernestii, were analyzed by this method. At the same time, four major bioactive isoflavonoids, namely calycosin-7-O-D-glucopyranoside, ononin, calycosin and formononetin, were simultaneously determined in Astragali Radix. This method was proven to have good precision, repeatability, stability and recovery. It was successfully applied to distinguish Astragali Radix from its adulterants species and can be used for the quality control of Astragali Radix.
Key words: Astragali Radix, isoflavonoids, HPLC, principle component analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis