Differentiating leaf and whole-plant samples of di- and tetraploid Gynostemma pentaphyllum (Thunb.) Makino using flow-injection mass spectrometric fingerprinting method

• A FIMS fingerprinting method was applied to differentiate four different types of G. pentaphyllum samples.
• PCA and PLS-DA were used to analyze FIMS fingerprints.
• Each sample could be efficiently differentiated and classified in 2 min.
• Eleven characteristic ions were screened out for differentiation of G. pentaphyllum samples.

In the present study, the feasibility and advantages of a flow-injection mass spectrometric (FIMS) fingerprinting method combined with chemometrics for quick differentiation and quality assessment of di- and tetraploid leaf and whole-plant Gynostemma pentaphyllum (Thunb.) Makino (Jiaogulan in Chinese) were investigated for the first time. The rapid FIMS fingerprinting method was applied to generate spectrometric fingerprints of four different types of G. pentaphyllum samples. Chemometrics, including principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least square discriminative analysis (PLS-DA), were used to analyze the fingerprints. The results showed that each sample could be effectively differentiated and classified in 2 min. Furthermore, eleven characteristic ions that played the most important roles for differentiating the four groups of G. pentaphyllum samples were screened out by loadings plot from PLS-DA.