Chromatographic Fingerprint Analysis of Varietal Differences among Three Species of Baishouwu and Simultaneous Analysis of Three Bioactive Constituents by Use of LC–DAD

For the first time, a validated high-performance liquid chromatographic method with diode-array detection has been developed for discrimination and quality assessment of three species of Baishouwu. LC with gradient elution was performed on extracts from 23 plant samples collected from different geographic locations. The fingerprint was established and 26 chromatographic peaks were selected as characteristic peaks. Similarities of chromatograms were greater than 0.9 for the same species but much lower than 0.6 for different species. Three bioactive constituents were simultaneously analyzed for further quantitative assessment of the quality of Baishouwu, and amounts of the three analytes in different species of Baishouwu samples were found to be significantly different. This LC–DAD method is thus a very reliable and useful method for assessment of the quality of Baishouwu.