Simultaneous Determination of 6 Effective Ingredients in Rhodiola by High Performance Liquid Chromatography and Quality Correlation Analysis

The Rhodiola powder (1.0 g) was extracted ultrasonically for 30 min in 10 mL of methanol, and the test solution was obtained after filtration. Six effective ingredients in the test solution were determined by high performance liquid chromatography with the detection wavelengths of 275 nm for salidroside, arbutin, tyrosol and gallic acid in 0-50 min, and 360 nm for kaempferol and quercetin in 50-75 min, using ZORBAX SB-C₁₈ column as the stationary phase, and a mixture of methanol and 0.3% (φ) phosphate solution in different volume ratios as the mobile phase for gradient elution. As shown by the results, linear relationships between values of peak area and mass of six effective ingredients were found in definite ranges, with detection limits (3S/N) ranged from 0.02 mg·g^-1 to 0.04 mg·g^-1. Test for recovery was made by standard addition method, giving results in the range of 96.8%-99.7%. RSDs (n=6) of the determined values were less than 2.0% in precision test. This method was applied to analysis of 5 species of Rhodiola (3 batches in one species), and the contents of salidroside were in line with the specification of pharmacopoeia. The results of analysis of variance and q-test showed that there were significant differences in the contents of salidroside, arbutin, tyrosol, kaempferol and quercetin, but there was no significant difference in the content of gallic acid. Among them, the contents of salidroside, arbutin, kaempferol and quercetin in Rhodiola crenulata were the highest, the content of tyrosol in Rhodiola cretinii was the highest, and the content of salidroside in Rhodiola fastigiata was the lowest.