A green and effective approach for characterisation and quality control of chrysanthemum by pressurized hot water extraction in combination with HPLC with UV absorbance detection.

Chrysanthemum is a ubiquitous plant with many species and wide uses, and it is usually consumed as functional food. The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate that chromatographic fingerprints obtained from the HPLC/UV analysis of the pressurized hot water extraction (PHWE) extracts together with the aid of principal component analysis (PCA), allowed for the clustering of various chrysanthemums of different species and provenance. In addition, a parallel study of pressurized fluid extraction (PFE) with methanol was carried out for comparison. From the results, a clearer separation and clustering was obtained with the environmentally-benign water extracts compared with methanol extracts. This study shows that PHWE in combination with HPLC/UV and PCA can be used successfully as a green and effective approach for characterisation and quality control of ubiquitous functional food such as chrysanthemum.