Determination of Flavonoids in Costus speciosus and Etlingera elatior by Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

In this article, a new and relatively simple liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) method was developed for the simultaneous determination of five flavonoid compounds. Under optimized conditions, the LC-MS analysis can be achieved on a reverse-phase C18 column (50 × 2.1 mm, 1.8 µm), with a binary mobile phase consisting of 0.1% formic acid in water and methanol under gradient elution conditions. The relative standard deviations (RSDs) of the retention times and peak areas for all analytes were in the range of 0.1–0.5% and 3.2–5.2%, respectively. The LODs and LOQs were in the range of 2.1–7.0 ng mL−1 and 6.9–23 ng mL−1, respectively. Furthermore, the developed LC-MS method was successfully applied to analyze flavonoids in different parts of two medicinal Zingiberaceae plants (i.e., Costus speciosus and Etlingera elatior) from different sources. The proposed LC-MS method was simple, effective, and reliable, and thus it has potential to be used for the quality control of other medicinal herbs.