Chemical Components Identification And Fingerprint Analysis Of Bansha Herbal Tea

Guangdong herbal tea (GHT) is a kind of vegetable beverage made from Chinese medicinalherbs and widely used for disease prevention and health care in Guangdong, southern ofChina. In2006, GHT was approved as one of the intangible cultural heritage by Chinesegovernment. Bansha herbal tea, a well-known commercial herbal tea in Guangdong, waswidely used for prevention and treatment of flu, fever, sore throat and other disease. In thisstudy, the chemical constituents of two BHT products, i.e. Huangzhenlong BHT andPingantang BHT, were analyzed by high performance liquid chromatography-massspectrometry and the fingerprints of the two BHT products were also established. The maincontents are as follows:A rapid and sensitive method for identification of the major constituents in BHT samples byHPLC-TOF-MS and HPLC-IT-MS was established. The method is efficient and robust forquality evaluation and quality control of BHT samples. Most of the constituents inHuangzhenlong BHT and Pingantang BHT could be efficiently separated and identified byHPLC-MS.34compounds were separated from Huangzhenlong BHT,17of them wereidentified or tentatively characterized;22compounds were separated from Pingantang BHT,14of them were identified or tentatively characterized. The proposed MSnfragmentationmechanisms of caffeoylquinic acids derivatives and flavone glycosides were also deduced.Fingerprints of Huangzhenlong BHT and Pingantang BHT were established by HPLC-IT-MS.The similarity evaluation and principal component analysis (PCA) were performed toevaluate the quality of41batches of BHT samples. The similarity evaluation results showedthat the similarities of21batches of Huangzhenlong BHT samples and20batches ofPingantang samples were no less than0.90, indicated that the quality of two BHT productswere relatively stable. PCA results showed that21batches of Huangzhenlong BHT samplesand20batches of Pingantang samples could be differentiated by the score plot, indicated thatthe formulas and the production processes of the two BHT products were different. Thedeveloped fingerprint analysis method was fast, efficient and robust for the quality control ofBHT products.