Application of two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to quality control of ginseng commercial products

Ginseng has been used as a powder or a crude extract of the plant roots. The quality control of commercial ginseng preparations is difficult due to the diverse compounds present. Most previous quality control methods using TLC or HPLC-UV (or -MS) cannot be expected to cover a wide range of compounds in the commercial ginseng preparations. In this study, the metabolic fingerprinting of ginseng preparations was performed by H-1-NMR spectroscopy. Although H-1-NMR spectroscopy could provide information about the total profile of the compounds present, low resolution and overlapping signals make it difficult for further identification of each compound. For overcoming the problem two-dimensional J-resolved NMR spectra and multivariate data analysis techniques was applied for the analysis. Principal component analysis (PCA) of projected J-resolved NMR spectra shows a clear discrimination among those samples by principal component I and principal component 3. The loading plot of PC values obtained from all NMR signals indicates that alanine, arginine, choline, fumaric acid, inositol, sucrose as well as ginsenosides are important metabolites to differentiate the preparations from each other. This method allows an efficient discrimination of a ginseng preparation in less than 15 minutes without any prepurification steps.