Polysaccharide was one of the considered major active ingredient in Polygonatum odoratum which was crucial for its quality evaluation. In this study, High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) combined with chemometrics methods were performed to assess the quality of P. odoratum polysaccharide (POP) harvested from different locations. The methodology validation and similarity evaluation results showed that the analysis method was able to meet the requirement of fingerprint analysis, and 10 batches of POPs had a high degree of similarity based on the similarity values were greater than 0.960. The results of hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) showed that different regions POPs could be classified by clustering analysis based on their nuances. The results of principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the mannose (58.13%∼78.18%) and glucuronic acid (2.36%∼11.72%) could be selected as herb markers for the quality control of P. odoratum. In conclusion, a more quantitative quality control method was established, and could be applied to the identification and quality control of different P. odoratum and their products.
Keywords: Polygonatum odoratum; fingerprint analysis; high performance liquid chromatography; polysaccharide.