Discrimination of leaves of Panax ginseng and P. quinquefolius by ultra high performance liquid chromatography quadrupole/time-of-flight mass spectrometry based metabolomics approach

• UHPLC–QTOF-MS/MS based metabolomics approach developed to find characteristic markers of LPG and LPQ leaves.
• Nine characteristic chemical markers for discriminating LPG and LPQ leaves were revealed for the first time.
• The metabolic profiles of LPG and LPQ leaves were also systematically investigated.

In present study, an ultra high performance liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC–QTOF-MS/MS) based metabolomics approach was established to investigate the metabolic profiles and characteristic chemical markers for distinguishing between leaves of Panax ginseng (LPG) and Panax quinquefolius (LPQ). The UHPLC–QTOF-MS/MS data were subjected to principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal partial least squared discrimination analysis (OPLS-DA) to rapidly find the potential characteristic components of LPG and LPQ, and the identities of detected peaks including the potential characteristic components were elucidated. Totally, 86 components were identified from these 2 kinds of leaf samples, in which 9 ginsenosides could be regarded as the characteristic chemical markers for the discrimination of LPG from LPQ. These results suggested that UHPLC–QTOF-MS/MS based metabolomics approach is a powerful tool to rapidly find characteristic markers for the quality control of LPG.

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