High-performance liquid chromatography based chemical fingerprint analysis and chemometric approaches for the identification and distinction of three endangered Panax plants in Southeast Asia.

Among Panax genus, only three endangered species Panax notoginseng, P. vietnamensis, and P. stipuleanatus that have a similar morphology are mainly distributed in Southeast Asia. These three plants are usually misidentified or adulterated. To identify them well, their chemical chromatographic fingerprints were established by an effective high-performance liquid chromatography method. By comparing the chromatograms, the three Panax species could be distinguished easily using the 22 characteristic peaks. Besides, the data of the chromatographic fingerprints aided by chemometric approaches were applied for the identification and investigation the relationship of different samples and species. Using similarity analysis, the chemical components revealed higher similarity between P. vietnamensis and P. stipuleanatus. The results of hierarchical clustering analysis indicated that samples belonging to the same species could be clustered together. The result of principal component analysis was similar with hierarchical clustering analysis and the three principal components accounted for >80.5% of total variability.