Quality assessment of Panax notoginseng flowers based on fingerprinting using high-performance liquid chromatography-PDA

An HPLC-PDA fingerprint method has been developed for quality control of Panax notoginseng flowers. HPLC separation was performed at 35 A degrees C on a Hypersil ODS column (4.6 mm x 250 mm, 5 mu m); the mobile phase was an acetonitrile-water gradient at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. Satisfactory separation of 19 common peaks was achieved within 60 min. Similarity evaluation was performed by use of the professional software Similarity Evaluation System for Chromatographic Fingerprint of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and the similarity among 12 batches of samples was no less than 0.93. Results of similarity evaluation confirmed that the quality of P. notoginseng flowers was stable, and that fingerprint analysis enabled precise and efficient quality control of P. notoginseng flowers.