Objective: To establish the fingerprint of mountain cultivated ginseng by HPLC and compare the fingerprint with that of wild ginseng for the quality control.
Methods: The analysis was carried out on a ZORBAX Eclipse XDB-C18 column (150 mm x 4.6 mm, 5 microm) with a mobile phase consisting of water-acetonitrile with gradient elution, and the flow rate was 1 mL/min. The column temperature was set at (30 +/- 0.15) degrees C and UV detection wavelength was set at 203 nm.
Results: There were 15 common peaks in the fingerprint of mountain cultivated ginseng. The similarities of 10 batches ginseng were between 0.90 and 1.00.
Conclusion: This method has good characteristics and specificity, and could be used for quality control of mountain cultivated ginseng. The type and content of components in wild ginseng were slightly higher than those in mountain cultivation ones.