Construction Of A Qualitative And Quantitative Chromatographic Quality Control Method Of Herbal Tea

Herbal tea is a kind of drink made from traditional Chinese medicines or herbs that can eliminate the body's heat in summer or treat the sore throat in winter.Herbal tea has many effects and is a product with Chinese characteristics.Herbal tea has a long course of development in China and has become a popular drink.Currently,there are various brands of herbal tea and its sales maintains rapid growth.As of 2008,herbal tea had been,exported to more than 50 countries and regions.However,the quality control of the herbal tea is often made the content of a component as an indicator,or focusing on sensory indicators,some of the physical and chemical indicators(mainly are some metal's content)and microbiological indicators.There is not a quality control standard that can feedback its essence.Our latest local technical specification DBJ440100/T 30-2009 "Hygiene requirements for vegetable beverage products" makes requirements of raw and auxiliary materials,sensory indicators,physical and chemical indicators(metal's content)and food additives.It does not propose a quality control standards that can reflect its active chemical components from the point of herbal ingredients.It is not only not conducive to the protection of consumers' safety and health,but also not conducive to maintaining the credibility of the specific brand herbal tea.This paper chose Wanglaoji,JDB and Heqizheng as analysis objects-The three herbal tea have such seven same herbal materials:Microcos Paniculata L.,Prunella vulgaris L.,Plumeria rubera L.cv.acutifolia,Mesona Chinensis Benth,Flos Lonicerae,Chrysanthemum morifolium Ramat and Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch.This paper aims to construct a chromatography quality control method for herbal tea.It specifically includes the following three part.Herbal tea has the characteristics of high content of sugar and low content of active ingredient.Firstly,we overcomed the deficiencies of the prior technology and put forward three sample preparation methods which successfully removed impurities and concentrated active ingredient in herbal tea.After HPLC analysis,we got their unique fingerprints as a means of quality control to control the overall quality.Secondly,by matching the standard and LC-MS analysis,we identified a chemical composition(rosmarinic acid)of the herbal tea.By separation and purification methods,such as macroporous resin method and preparative HPLC,and structure identification methods,such as NMR,IR,UV and MS,we identified the structure of three components in the herbal tea.It is the first report of the four characteristic components in such herbal tea and the work lays the foundation for the quantitative quality control of the herbal tea.Finally,by comparing the HPLC retention time and UV figure,we judged the herb source of the four characteristic components in the herbal tea.We chose content of three characteristic components of the four as indicator and built quality control methods for such class of herbal tea.The quality control methods of herbal tea we constructed can be used for macroscopical and elaborate quality control of herbal tea and fills the methodology blank that current herbal tea quality control method only has raw material requirements,sensory indicators,health indicators and no related herb chemical composition indicators.