Multi-wavelength fusion column fingerprint technology combined with chemometric analysis to evaluate the overall quality of the root

Chromatographic fingerprinting provides effective technical means for quality evaluation of traditional Chinese medicine. In this work, a novel multi-wavelength fusion column fingerprint was obtained by intelligent selection of chromatographic peaks from different wavelengths, which displayed the maximum peak area information under the optimal wavelength at the same retention time. Here, the Gardenia jasminoides root was selected as a sample. The multi-wavelength fusion column fingerprint graph of the Gardenia jasminoides root was constructed from five wavelengths (203 nm, 210 nm, 238 nm, 250 nm and 330 nm). The peak capacity, peak resolution, the number of common peaks and similarity were used to evaluate the performance. The 19 batches of Gardenia jasminoides root were classified into three categories with clear distinction between origin categories based on the multi-wavelength fusion column fingerprint combined with chemometrics, including hierarchical cluster analysis and principal component analysis. Nine markers of variation that led to differences between batches were screened by orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis. This study demonstrated that the classification model based on the multi-wavelength fusion column fingerprint was better than that on a single-wavelength, and the fusion fingerprint was suitable for the identification and quality control of traditional Chinese medicine with more comprehensive chemical composition information and more accurate prediction ability. Chromatographic fingerprinting provides effective technical means for quality evaluation of traditional Chinese medicine.