[Objective] To determine the conten of mineral elements and analyze the characteristic elements in Gynostemma and evaluate its quality. [Methods] The content of 18 elements in Gynostemma samples of different producing areas were determined by the method of ICP-OES. The principal component analysis of SPSS was applied for the evaluation of characteristic elements in Gynostemma. [Results] The 18 mineral elements had good linear relationship. By principal components analysis,it concluded that four major factors could be used to evaluate the quality of Gynostemma. 12 mineral elements were the characteristic elements of Gynostemma. And according to the clustering results,the content of mineral elements in samples had correlation with their producing areas. [Conclusions]The method was accurate,reproducible and of high sensitivity,which could be used as the method for quantitative determination of mineral elements in Gynostemma. The clustering results indicated that 10 samples were clustered into 2 classes. 1,2,4,5,3,7 and 10 were clustered into a class and 6,9 and 8 were clustered into another class.
