Determination of bioactive components in the fruits of Cercis chinensis Bunge by HPLC-MS/MS and quality evaluation by principal components and hierarchical cluster analyses

The fruits of leguminous plants Cercis Chinensis Bunge are still overlooked although they have been reported to be antioxidative because of the limited information on the phytochemicals of C. chinensis fruits. A simple, rapid and sensitive HPLC-MS/MS method was developed for the identification and quantitation of the major bioactive components in C. chinensis fruits. Eighteen polyphenols were identified, which are first reported in C. chinensis fruits. Moreover, ten components were simultaneously quantified. The validated quantitative method was proved to be sensitive, reproducible and accurate. Then, it was applied to analyze batches of C. chinensis fruits from different phytomorph and areas. The principal components analysis (PCA) realized visualization and reduction of data set dimension while the hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) indicated that the content of phenolic acids or all ten components might be used to differentiate C. chinensis fruits of different phytomorph.