Abstract

A reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was developed to evaluate the quality of Morinda officinalis through establishing chromatographic fingerprint and simultaneous determination of four anthraquinone compounds, namely 2-hydroxy-3-hydroxymethyl- anthraquinone, 2-hydroxy-1-methoxy-anthraquinone, rubiadin-1-methyl ether and rubiadin. The chromatographic separation was performed on C₁₈ column with a gradient elution program using a mixture of acetonitrile and 0.2% aqueous phosphoric acid (v/v) as mobile phase. In fingerprint analysis, 16 peaks were selected as the characteristic peaks to evaluate the similarities of samples collected from different origins in China according to the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) requirements. Furthermore, hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA) were also applied to evaluate the variation of chemical components among different sources of M. officinalis in China. This study indicated that the developed HPLC method, combined with chemometrics analysis, could be readily utilized to control the quality of M. officinalis and its related traditional Chinese medicinal (TCM) preparations.

Key words: Morinda officinalis, fingerprint analysis, anthraquinone compounds, chemometric analysis, quality control.