Identification of Wild-Simulated Ginseng Powder, Cultivated Ginseng Powder, Cultivated Ginseng Decoction Pieces, and Baoyuan Decoction Containing Wild-Simulated Ginseng and Cultivated Ginseng by UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS and Non-Targeted Metabolite Profiling.

Abstract

Wild-simulated ginseng (linxiashen, LXS) powder, farm-grown ginseng (yuanshen, YS) powder, and farm-grown ginseng decoction pieces (YSDP), as well as the Baoyuan decoction prepared from them (BYD-LXS, BYD-YS, and BYD-YSDP) by boiling, exhibit certain metabolic differences in their chemical composition. To elucidate the holistic molecular profile and differences, a reversed-phase UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS^E metabolomics strategy with an ACQUITY HSS T3 stationary phase was applied to characterize and discover differential chemical markers. In total, 293, 663, 311, and 645 compounds (including 22, 13, 24, and 28 rare ginsenosides) were annotated in LXS/YS, BYD-LXS/BYD-YS, YS/YSDP, and BYD-YS/BYD-YSDP respectively. Based on PCA and OPLS-DA, 87, 222, 95, and 168 chemical markers (including 8, 7, 13, and 3 rare ginsenosides) were annotated in LXS/YS, BYD-LXS/BYD-YS, YS/YSDP, and BYD-YS/BYD-YSDP decoctions, respectively. Secondary metabolites such as triterpene saponins were found to be present at higher levels in LXS decoction and BYD-LXS decoction. The amount of components eluted from YSDP decoction was significantly higher than that from the decoction of YS powder. In addition, Support Vector Machine and Back Propagation Neural Network models with feature selection nested within cross-validation were constructed to classify LXS/YS, BYD-LXS/BYD-YS, YS/YSDP, and BYD-YS/BYD-YSDP decoctions, achieving 100%, 100%, 100%, and 94.44% classification accuracies, respectively. This study provides a basis for the quality assessment of ginseng and Baoyuan decoction, as well as for the development and utilization of rare ginsenosides.