Abstract
To explore the nutrients in roots of Angelica sinensis (Angelicae Sinensis Radix, ASR), a medicinal and edible plant, and evaluate its nutritional value, a rapid and reliable UHPLC-TQ-MS method was established and used to determine the potential nutritional compounds, including nucleosides, nucleobases and amino acids, in 50 batches of ASR samples obtained using two drying methods. The results showed that ASR is a healthy food rich in nucleosides, nucleobases and amino acids, especially arginine. The total average content of nucleosides and nucleobases in all ASR samples was 3.94 mg/g, while that of amino acids reached as high as 61.79 mg/g. Principle component analysis showed that chemical profile differences exist between the two groups of ASR samples prepared using different drying methods, and the contents of nutritional compounds in samples dried with the tempering-intermittent drying processing method (TIDM) were generally higher than those dried using the traditional solar processing method. The above results suggest that ASR should be considered an ideal healthy food and TIDM could be a suitable drying method for ASR when taking nucleosides, nucleobases and amino acids as the major consideration for their known human health benefits.
Highlights
Angelica sinensis (Oliv.) Diels, an Umbelliferous plant, is indigenous to China and widely cultivated in Gansu, Yunnan, Sichuan and Hubei provinces of China
The results revealed that after the sample was extracted for min, the total contents of the 40 analytes did not increase with further extension of the extraction time, and in some cases, the contents of some analytes even decreased because the long duration of the sonication led to the degradation of the more unstable components
The results showed that 0.2% formic acid mixed in the salt mobile phase afforded better peak shapes for most of the amino acids, except for some basic ones, such as histidine, arginine, and lysine, while gave better sensitivity and provided lower retention times than solutions with 0.05% and 0.1% formic acid
Summary
Angelica sinensis (Oliv.) Diels, an Umbelliferous plant, is indigenous to China and widely cultivated in Gansu, Yunnan, Sichuan and Hubei provinces of China. Pharmacological studies have shown that these components from ASR exhibit multiple bioactivities, such as inhibition of platelet aggregation, improvement of microcirculation, reduction of hypercholesterolemia and hyperglycemia, hepatic. Nucleosides and amino acids participate in the synthesis of DNA and proteins and many of them exhibit multiple bioactivities like antiplatelet aggregation [10], antiarrhythmic [11], antioxidant [12], and antiviral actions [13]. These compounds have been developed into medical or functional food products. Considering the benefit of these compounds for human health, several analytical methods to detect them have been reported to assess the quality of food or medicinal materials, such as fruits of Ziziphus jujuba [17,18], Astragali Radix [19], Notoginseng Radix et Rhizoma [20], pollen of Typha angustifolia [21], etc
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