Quantitative Analysis in Combination with Fingerprint Technology and Chemometric Analysis Applied for Evaluating Six Species of Wild Paris Using UHPLC-UV-MS

A fast method was developed by ultra high performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) for simultaneous determination of polyphyllin I and polyphyllin II. Chemometric analyses including principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) based on UHPLC chromatography were used to evaluate 38 batches from six species of Paris. Variable importance of projection was applied to select important peaks. Meanwhile, similarity analysis of UHPLC fingerprint was used to evaluate the sample of Paris polyphylla yunnanensis (PPY) and P. axialis (PA). The results indicated that the total content of saponins in PPY and PA collected from Baoshan City of Yunnan Province above 8.07 mg/g was stronger than that from other areas of the rest of species. PLS-DA showed better performance than PCA with regard to classifying the samples. Retention time during 20–27 minutes of UHPLC was screened as significant peak for distinguishing Paris of different species and original geography. All of PPY and PA with similarity value were more than 0.80. It indicated that quantitative analysis combined with chemometric and similarity analyses could evaluate the different species of Paris effectively and comprehensively.