Authentication, chemical profiles analysis, and quality evaluation of corn silk via DNA barcoding and UPLC-LTQ/Orbitrap MS chemical profiling

Corn silk is commonly consumed in teas, food ingredients, and herbal medicines. Several varieties of corn silk are grown in different habitats in China. However, as information regarding their phytochemistry and genetic diversity is limited, their medicinal potential has not been utilized thoroughly. Thus, we aimed to use a combination of DNA barcoding based on specific primer ITSC sequences and ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with linear trap quadrupole-Orbitrap mass spectrometry (UPLC-LTQ/Orbitrap MS) approach for identifying and evaluating corn silk. ITSC barcoding helped us to identify that 52 samples could be classified into 7 groups of corn silk varieties, but the widely used nrITS and psbA-trnH barcodes failed to identify these varieties. UPLC-LTQ/Orbitrap MS was used to study the components in alcohol extracts derived from different corn silk varieties, and the detected chemical components were analyzed via bioinformatics techniques. We proposed 199 components using untargeted UPLC-LTQ/Orbitrap MS-based metabolomics analysis and identified 67 components. PCA and OPLS-DA analysis revealed two distinct chemotypes by selecting 27 components that could act as difference indicators. KEGG analysis showed that the 199 components were enriched in 12 metabolic pathways. The results showed that corn silk is rich in many types of chemicals and DNA barcoding is better than UPLC-LTQ/Orbitrap MS in distinguishing the differences between different varieties of corn silk. Our findings provide new insights into the chemical and molecular characteristics of different varieties of corn silk, which play a crucial role in the utilization of corn silk resources.