BINARY DETECTOR FINGERPRINTS ANALYSIS OF ZIZIPHUS JUJUBA AND ZIZIPHUS JUJUBA VAR. SPINOSA BY HPLC-DAD-ELSD COUPLED WITH CHEMOMETRIC METHOD

Abstract

To discriminate the fruits of Ziziphus jujuba and Z. jujuba var. spinosa, a binary detector fingerprint was proposed and validated by utilizing HPLC coupled with two detection techniques of diode assay detection (DAD) and evaporative light scattering detection (ELSD). Using the data fusion method, the two sets of chromatographic data were combined to a fusion data set of fingerprints, which was further analyzed with chemometric methods of hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA). The results showed that the presented fingerprint obtained on DAD and ELSD could better represent the chemical characteristics of the jujube samples than that obtained at a single detector. With the aid of chemometric methods, this validated binary detector fingerprints method could be used as a powerful approach for discrimination of Z. jujuba and Z. jujuba var. spinosa. Furthermore, from the results of PCA, it was found that the main differences between the fruits of Z. jujuba and Z. jujuba var. spinosa were the content variances of the flavonoids and ursane-type triterpenic acids, so these compounds were promising to be selected as the markers for distinguishing these jujube fruits.