Phytochemical analysis and quality assessment of Podocarpus macrophyllus by UHPLC-DAD-ESI-MS and UHPLC-MS/MS MRM methods

Abstract

The concern about the quality of medicinal herbs is becoming important due to the poor quality of commercial products like cosmetics, functional foods, and natural medicine produced from them. However, there is a lack of modern analytical methods to evaluate the constituents of P. macrophyllus until the moment. This paper reports an analytical method based on UHPLC-DAD and UHPLC-MS/MS MRM methods to evaluate the ethanolic extracts of P. macrophyllus leaves and twigs. 15 main constituents were identified using a UHPLC-DAD-ESI-MS/MS profiling. Subsequently, a reliable analytical method was established and successfully used to quantitate the constituent’s content using four marker compounds in leaf and twig extracts of this plant. The result obtained from the current study demonstrated the secondary metabolites and the variety of their derivatives in this plant. The analytical method can help evaluate the quality of P. macrophyllus and develop high-value functional materials.

Keywords:

• Podocarpus macrophyllus
• UHPLC-MS/MS
• mass spectrometry
• validation method

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Sunchon National University Research Fund in 2021 (Grant number: 2021-0214) and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (No. NRF-2020R1A2C1101252).