Quality evaluation of Codonopsis Radix through high performance liquid chromatography fingerprint combined with chemometrics and simultaneous determination of five characteristic ingredients

Codonopsis Radix (CR) is recorded as the roots of Codonopsis pilosula, C. pilosula var. modesta and Codonopsis tangshen. It is difficult to evaluate the quality of CR because of the existence of many original plants. In this paper, a strategy integrating chromatographic analysis and chemometrics for the quality control of CR is proposed. Systematic analysis of the chemical composition of CR was achieved through high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) fingerprinting. Based on the HPLC fingerprinting data, chemometrics, including unsupervised principal component analysis (PCA) and supervised orthogonal partial least squares-discrimination analysis (OPLS-DA), were applied to classify all CR samples. Components with variable importance in projection values higher than 1 in the OPLS-DA model were selected as potential chemical markers for distinguishing the origins of CR. Finally, an HPLC method was validated for determining the five characteristic ingredients in the CR samples. HPLC characteristic fingerprints showed 17 common peaks for C. pilosula, 13 for C. pilosula var. modesta, and 9 for C. tangshen, and all of them showed good similarity (>0.9). Additionally, there were 9 common peaks for all CR samples with relatively poor similarity, ranging from 0.607 to 0.970. PCA could differentiate CR from the three origins, except for a partial overlap between C. pilosula and C. pilosula var. Modesta, and the OPLS-DA model achieved excellent classification results. Eight components (peaks 12, 8, lobetyolin, 10, codonopsin І, syringin, 3, and 11) were selected as potential chemical markers. There was a large discrepancy in the contents of the five characteristic ingredients in all samples, with the relative standard deviation ranging from 36.0% (lobetyolin) to 85.9% (atractylenolide Ⅲ). The average contents of the five characteristic ingredients were similar between C. pilosula and C. pilosula var. modesta samples and notably higher than those of C. tangshen samples. Consequently, a rapid, precise, and feasible strategy was established for the discrimination and quality control of CR with different origins.