Objective To establish an ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) fingerprint of Lycii Fructus and to analyze the quality differences among samples from different producing areas using chemometrics, and to determine the contents of 3 flavonoid components.

Methods The fingerprint was established on an ACQUITY UPLC^® HSS T3 column (100 mm×2.1 mm, 1.8 µm) with gradient elution using methanol-acetonitrile (1:4) and 0.5% formic acid solution as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 0.3 mL/min, column temperature of 35 ℃, detection wavelength of 360 nm, and injection volume of 1 μL. Similarity evaluation was performed using the Similarity Evaluation System for Chromatographic Fingerprint of Traditional Chinese Medicine (2012 edition). Chemical pattern recognition was conducted by hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA) for samples from different batches, and the contents of three identified components were determined.

Results A total of 8 common peaks were identified in the 32 batches of Lycii Fructus, among which peaks 6, 7, and 8 were identified as rutin, kaempferol-3-O-rutinoside, and narcissin, respectively. The similarities of the fingerprints ranged from 0.903 to 0.999. The results of PCA and HCA showed an overall clustering trend by producing area, though some samples from different regions overlapped. The contents of rutin, kaempferol-3-O-rutinoside, and narcissin in the 32 batches were 74.35-306.95, 1.78-8.18, and 5.11-20.44 µg/g, respectively.

Conclusion The method is simple and reliable, and the established fingerprint combined with multi-component content determination can provide a reference for quality evaluation and chemical characteristic comparison of Lycii Fructus from different producing areas.

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