Ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography coupled with ion mobility quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry for separation and identification of hawthorn fruits by multivariate analysis

Abstract

A method for identification and difference analysis of organic acids, flavonoids, triterpenoids and flavans in various species of hawthorn by ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography coupled with ion mobility quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MS) by stoichiometry was proposed. Investigated and optimized various parameters that affected the separation and response of liquid chromatography, included the type of mobile phase, the concentration of formic acid water and the type of column. In order to identify the target compounds, the second-level debris and collision cross-sectional area determination experiments were carried out. The combination of MS data and multivariate analysis, such as principal component analysis and cluster analysis, can be used to distinguish common plant hawthorn, hawthorn leaves, south wild hawthorn and north wild hawthorn. A partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLSDA) model was established for different species of hawthorn, and the newly added hawthorn sample mixture was evaluated by PLSDA. The ultrasonic extraction method showed excellent linearity (R2 > 0.9910), with LODs and LOQs of 0.53–83.33 ng/mL and 1.75–277.78 ng/mL, respectively. This method has been successfully used in the analysis of multiple active compounds in hawthorn samples.