Simultaneous quantification of 33 active components in Notopterygii Rhizoma et Radix using ultra high performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry

A method of ultra high performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry was developed for the simultaneous quantification of 33 active components including 26 coumarins and 7 phenolic acid esters in Notopterygii Rhizoma et Radix (NRR). Chromatographic separation was achieved on a Kinetex® C18 column (100 mm × 2.1 mm i.d.; 2.6 μm) with a gradient elution in 18 min. Electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometric detection was conducted in the positive and negative ionization modes with multiple reaction monitoring. All of 33 analytes showed good linearity (R2 ≥ 0.9919) within the test range. The relative standard deviations of the precision, repeatability and stability were not exceeding 4.97%, and the recoveries were in the range of 85.37%–115.00%. The matrix effect on the response of target analyte was not obvious. The validated method was successfully applied to quantify the 33 components in ten batches of NRR samples. Quantitative results showed the coumarins and phenolic acid esters with large difference in level of content in the herb samples. Furthermore, hierarchical cluster analysis and principal component analysis were applied to classify and discriminate these samples. The variations of isoimperatorin, notopterol, bergamottin, nodakenin, phenethylferulate were suggested as important indicators of NRR quality. This work may serve for quality identification and comprehensive evaluation of NRR.