Near infrared spectroscopy as a tool for the rapid analysis of the Honeysuckle extracts

There is a lack of methods to analyze large numbers of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) samples quickly and efficiently. Here we present a near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy-based method for the rapid analysis of Honeysuckle extracts. NIR spectra of 124 Honeysuckle extract samples produced within a four-year period were collected in the diffuse reflection mode and pretreated with multiplicative scatter correction (MSC), smoothing and derivative. Using partial least squares regression (PLSR), including PLS1 and PLS2, we established and validated the calibration models of six organic acids. Our results showed that both accuracy and precision of the NIR spectroscopy-based method meet the requirements of a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) factory. This new method has the potential to save time, efforts and cost associated with the analysis of large quantities of unknown samples and will be particularly applicable to TCM factories for cost reduction.