Studies On Quality Assessment Of Morindae Officinalis Radix

To study the pharmacognostic characteristics, quantitative determination andfingerprint chromatography of Morindae Officinalis Radix for the following goals:1.To build a simple pharmacognostic identification method for Morindae OfficinalisRadix quality evaluation;2.To study the total flavonoid content in Morindae Officinalis Radix collected fromproducing areas.3.To develop a rapid, sensitive and accurate high-performance liquid chromatographymethod to investigate the content of rubiadin;4. Meanwhile, to establish the HPLC fingerprint of anthraquinone components amongcultivated and wild Morindae officinalis Radix from different producing areas.In one word, the purpose of that paper is to construct the suitable methods for qualityevaluation of Morindae Officinalis Radix for the further utilization and development,through investigating the contents of active constituents and assessing the quality of theherb.Pharmacognostic study: Botanical，morphological，microscopic and the thin layerchromatographic identifications of Morindae Officinalis Radix were carried out. MorindaeOfficinalis Radix was a vine-like shrub plant, with opposite phyllotaxis, entire margin,membranous stipule sheath. Its capitulum arranged on the stem end with white corolla.Roots were cylindrical, yellow on surface, purple or lavender on fracture section. In crosssection of the roots, single or accumulated sclereids were intermittently arranged in ring on the outside of the cortex. In the powder of the crude drug, sclereid, cortical parenchymacells contained calcium oxalate crystal, catheter and cork cells could be seen. The TLCresults showed that Morindae Officinalis Radix from different areas had the identical spotsthough there were some different in the spot number and color. The above pharmacognosticcharacteristics, obvious and stable, can be applied as distinguishing identification forMorindae Officinalis Radix.Determination of total flavonoids: The extraction liquid ratio, alcohol concentrationand extraction time were optimized by L9(33) orthogonal design, for study the extractiveefficiency of the total flavonoids. The total flavonoids were determined by UV spectrummethod (Sodium nitrite-sodium hydroxide-aluminum chloride colorimetric method).Orthogonal experiment results show that: the optimal extraction process was that the rawpowder of Morindae officinalis Radix extracted with30folds volume of75%ethanolconcentration for30min. The optimized extraction process is stable and available, and theassay, simple, reliable and durable which can be used to determine total flavoniods inMorindae Officinalis Radix.Rubiadin determination: To develop the rubiadin determination, A gradient elutionmode was applied on a Waters C8column (4.6mm×150mm,3.5μm)at30℃withacetonitrile-water as mobile phase with flow rate of1.0mL·mL-1, and detected at280nm.The results showed that the calibration curve for rubiadin was linear in the range of0.2484-6.2100μg·mL-1with regression of y=129.96x-6.3683(r2=1.0000), the averagerecovery was104.56%(n=6)and RSD was2.01%.The proposed method is sensitive,accurate and reproducible, it can be used to determine rubiadin in Morindae OfficinalisRadix and suitabled for the quality control of Morindae Officinalis Radix.The contents ofrubiadin arevaried among producing areas, it is low in Wuhua, and high in the otherorigins.Anthraquinones fingerprint study: After the sample was refluxed with chloroformfor anthraquinones, an RP-HPLC fingerprint was developed subsequently for MorindaeOfficinalis Radix quality evaluation. The results showed that anthraquinones in MorindaeOfficinalis Radix had been effectively separated, and8common characteristic peaks, identified as characteristic fingerprint peaks in HPLC fingerprint were found in all thesamples. Samples from different regions were of high similarity, although the wildMorindae Officinalis Radix of Wuhua had low similarity with others, the number of peaksand even the abundance of the common characteristic fingerprint peaks were different inthe fingerprint between the wild and cultivated Morindae Officinalis Radix from Wuhua.The HPLC fingerprint method can be applied to assess and control the quality of MorindaeOfficinalis Radix from different origins.