Evaluation of the cultivation age of dried ginseng radix and its commercial products by using (1)H-NMR fingerprint analysis.

The perfect ginseng radix is collected when the ginseng root reaches a cultivation age of six years; this ensures the best mass quality and consistency of the plant's essential bioactive components. Since traditional means of authentication via physical appearance or smell are hardly reliable, an efficient analytical method that can determine the real cultivation age of dried ginseng radix in commercial products, especially ginseng products of various dosage forms, is urgently required. In the present study, chemical fingerprint by (1)H-NMR spectroscopy was used on dried ginseng radix samples with cultivation ages ranging from 1-6 years. The resulting dataset was then analyzed by using principle component analysis and cluster analysis to build up a distributive model that allows the identification of the real cultivation age of the ginseng radix based on a plant metabolomic strategy. This quality surveillance method was able to clearly discriminate the 6 years old ginseng radix from the other ages, and could be applied on the evaluation of the real cultivation age for the various dried white ginseng radix samples and commercial products accurately.