Nontargeted metabolomics approach for the differentiation of cultivation ages of mountain cultivated ginseng leaves using UHPLC/QTOF-MS.

The adulteration or falsification of the cultivation age of mountain cultivated ginseng (MCG) has been a serious problem in the commercial MCG market. To develop an efficient discrimination tool for the cultivation age and to explore potential age-dependent markers, an optimized ultra high-performance liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC/QTOF-MS)-based metabolomics approach was applied in the global metabolite profiling of 156 MCG leaf (MGL) samples aged from 6 to 18 years. Multivariate statistical methods such as principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) were used to compare the derived patterns between MGL samples of different cultivation ages. The present study demonstrated that 6-18-year-old MGL samples can be successfully discriminated using two simple successive steps, together with four PLS-DA discrimination models. Furthermore, 39 robust age-dependent markers enabling differentiation among the 6-18-year-old MGL samples were discovered. The results were validated by a permutation test and an external test set to verify the predictability and reliability of the established discrimination models. More importantly, without destroying the MCG roots, the proposed approach could also be applied to discriminate MCG root ages indirectly, using a minimum amount of homophyletic MGL samples combined with the established four PLS-DA models and identified markers. Additionally, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study in which 6-18-year-old MCG root ages have been nondestructively differentiated by analyzing homophyletic MGL samples using UHPLC/QTOF-MS analysis and two simple successive steps together with four PLS-DA models. The method developed in this study can be used as a standard protocol for discriminating and predicting MGL ages directly and homophyletic MCG root ages indirectly.