Quality Assessment of Different Species and Differently Prepared Slices of Zedoray Rhizome by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography and Colorimeter with the Aid of Chemometrics

In this study, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and colorimeter were applied to evaluate the quality of different species and differently prepared slices of Zedoray Rhizome samples with the aid of chemometric tools. Fifty batches of Zedoray Rhizome samples from different species and forty-two batches of Zedoray Rhizome samples from differently prepared slices were collected. The quantitative method was developed using HPLC to simultaneously determine the contents of twelve chemical ingredients in Zedoray Rhizome. The colour parameters L, a, and b were measured by a colorimeter. Then, the collected data were analyzed by the principal component analysis and Pearson correlation analysis. The results showed that the proposed method was capable of accurately determining the contents of the twelve chemical ingredients and the colour parameters for the collected samples. There was a dramatic difference in the contents of the chemical ingredients and in the colour parameters among different species and differently prepared slices of Zedoray Rhizome samples. This study reveals that combining HPLC, colorimeter, and chemometric tools can provide a new approach to comprehensively evaluate the quality of Zedoray Rhizome samples.