Ten compounds, including nucleosides and amino acids were identified by UPLC-Q-TOF-MS. HPLC fingerprints on these compounds in Alismatis Rhizoma were established for the first time. The comparisons of Alismatis Rhizoma from different regions were conducted by the similarity evaluation and hierarchical cluster analysis(HCA). Meanwhile, the HPLC-DAD method for the content determination of five nucleosides was also established. The results showed that the similarities of Alismatis Rhizoma collected from Sichuan and Fujian provinces were above 0.96, whereas they were less than 0.87 in those from Guangxi province. The results of HCA showed the samples from Sichuan and Fujian were gathered in the same group, all samples from Guangxi in another group, which indicated the similarities between samples from Sichuan and Fujian in nucleosides and they were different from the samples from Guangxi. The total contents of five nucleosides were revealed, of which samples from Sichuan and Fujian were 0.81-1.30 mg·g~(-1) followed a descending order of vernine>cytidine>uridine>adenine>adenosine, and from Guangxi were 0.35-0.50 mg·g~(-1) with the sequences of uridine>adenine>vernine>cytidine>adenosine. The nucleosides contents of samples from Sichuan and Fujian were both higher than that from Guangxi. For samples from Sichuan and Fujian, the former was slightly higher, except for adenine. These results would be helpful to reveal the bioactive constituents in aqueous extract and provided important evidences for the quality control of Alismatis Rhizoma.
Keywords: Alismatis Rhizoma; contents determination; fingerprint; nucleosides.