Determination of active ingredients of Rhododendron dauricum L. by capillary electrophoresis with electrochemical detection.

High-performance capillary electrophoresis with electrochemical detection was employed to analyse active ingredients of Rhododendron dauricum L., an important crude herb frequently used in Chinese medicines. Farrerol, quercetin, syringic acid, vanillic acid, 4-hydroxybenzoic acid, protocatechuic acid are major important active ingredients. Operated in a wall-jet configuration, a 300-microm diameter carbon-disk electrode was used as the working electrode, which exhibits a good response at +950 mV (vs. saturated calomel electrodes) for six analytes. Under the optimum conditions, the analytes were baseline separated within 16 min in a borax buffer (pH 8.7). Notably, excellent linearity was obtained over two orders of magnitude with detection limits (S/N=3) ranged from 9 x 10(-7) to 3.0 x 10(-6) M for all analytes. This method was successfully used in the analysis of Rhododendron dauricum L. with relatively simple extraction procedures, and the assay results were satisfactory.