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HPLC–TOF‐MS and HPLC–MS/MS combined with multivariate analysis for the characterization and discrimination of phenolic profiles in nonfumigated and sulfur‐fumigated rhubarb
Author(s) -
Yan Yan,
Zhang Qianqian,
Feng Fang
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of separation science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.72
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1615-9314
pISSN - 1615-9306
DOI - 10.1002/jssc.201501382
Subject(s) - chemistry , sulfur , chromatography , mass spectrometry , high performance liquid chromatography , herb , medicinal herbs , organic chemistry , traditional medicine , medicine
Sulfur fumigation has recently been used during the postharvest handling of rhubarb to reduce the drying duration and control pests. However, a few reports question the effect of sulfur fumigation on the bioactive components of rhubarb, which is crucial for the quality evaluation of the herbal medicine. The bottleneck limiting the study comes from the complex compounds that exist in herb samples with diverse structural features, wide concentration range and the difficulty to obtain all the reference standards. In this study, an integrated strategy based on the highly effective separation and analysis by liquid chromatography coupled with diode‐array detection and time‐of‐flight/triple‐quadruple tandem mass spectrometry combined with multivariate analysis was established. 68 phenolic compounds that exist in nonfumigated and sulfur‐fumigated herb samples of rhubarb were tentatively assigned based on their retention behavior, UV spectra, accurate molecular weight, and mass spectral fragments. Qualitative and semiquantitative comparison revealed a serious reduction of the majority of phenolic compounds in sulfur‐fumigated rhubarb. Furthermore, multivariate analysis was applied to holistically discriminate nonfumigated from sulfur‐fumigated rhubarb and explore the characteristic chemical markers. The established approach was specific and rapid for characterizing and screening sulfur‐fumigated rhubarb among commercial samples and could be applied for the quality assessment of other sulfur‐fumigated herbs.