Rapid analysis of polysaccharides contents in Glycyrrhiza by near infrared spectroscopy and chemometrics.

A method for quantitative analysis of the polysaccharides contents in Glycyrrhiza was developed based on near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, and by adopting the phenol-sulphuric acid method as the reference method. This is the first time to use this method for predicting polysaccharides contents in Glycyrrhiza. To improve the predictive ability (or robustness) of the model, the competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS) mathematical strategy was used for selecting relevance wavelengths. By using the restricted relevance wavelengths, the PLS model was more efficient and parsimonious. The coefficient of determination of prediction (Rp(2)) and the root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) of the obtained optimum models were 0.9119 and 0.4350 for polysaccharides. The selected relevance wavelengths were also interpreted. It proved that all the wavelengths selected by CARS were related to functional groups of polysaccharide. The overall results show that NIR spectroscopy combined with chemometrics can be efficiently utilised for analysis of polysaccharides contents in Glycyrrhiza.