Investigation of Two Species of Huang-qi (Aatragalus membranaceus and Hedysarum polybotrys) by HPLC, ITS, Microscopic Morphology and Antioxidant Activities
I-JUNG LEE1, PIN-CHIEH HUANG2, LI-JIE ZHANG1, CHIA-CHING LIAW3, MING-REN LIN3, CHIA-JUNG YU1, CHUNG-I HUANG2* AND YAO-HAUR KUO1,4*
1. National Research Institute of Chinese Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.
2. Department of Food Science, NationalIlanUniversity, Ilan, Taiwan, R.O.C.
3. R & D Department, Star Biotechnologies Inc., Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.
4. Graduate Institute of Integrated Medicine, ChinaMedicalUniversity, Taichung, Taiwan, R.O.C.
(Received: October 18, 2011; Accepted: March 12, 2012)
ABSTRACT
Hedysarum polybotrys is commonly substituted for Astragalus membranaceus in Taiwan for many years. This study described several different ways, including microscopic morphology, ITS (internal transcribed spacer) sequencing and HPLC fingerprint methods to identify these two species. Furthermore, the antioxidant activities of the two plants were evaluated and H. polybotrys had higher antioxidant activity than A. membranaceus. All the methods gave consistent conclusions that test samples KRA2, 3 and 8 belonged to A. membranaceus, while KRA1, 4, 5, 6 and 7 belonged to H. polybotrys. The results revealed that all the above methods may successfully discriminate between A. membranaceus and H. polybotrys.
Key words: ITS, microscopic, HPLC fingerprint, antioxidant activity, Astragalus membranaceus, Hedysarum polybotrys, Astragali Radix