Abstract

So far, there has been no advanced method to assure the quality control for Astragalus. However, this paper summarizes a fingerprinting approach, which based on developed high performance liquid chromatography to provide reference for the scientific evaluation of the intrinsic quality of Astragalus. To assess the chemical content of Astragalus in different years and different producing areas, we determined 22 batches of samples through cluster analysis and similar calculations. According to the clustering analysis, we group the two-year-old Astragalus into three categories, which established the common model of RP-HPLC Fingerprint of Astragalus, and identified 12 peaks, two of which were Astragaloside (No. 15 peak) and Formononetin (No. 17 peak) respectively. In addition, from the fingerprints, the variation of chemical composition of Astragalus from the same producing area but different years was also summed up. In conclusion, not only is this method simple, fast and reproducible, but also the established fingerprints have a strong exclusion, providing evidences for the quality control and evaluation of Astragalus.

Key words: Astragalus, HPLC, fingerprint.