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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