Quality evaluation of the leaves of Magnolia officinalis var. biloba using high‐performance liquid chromatography fingerprint analysis of phenolic compounds

The high‐performance liquid chromatography fingerprint method is a simple and reliable technique to evaluate the quality of leaves of Magnolia officinalis Rehd.et Wils. var. biloba Rehd.et Wils. We used the following bioactive phenolic constituents as reference compounds: rutin, afzelin, hyperoside, isoquercitrin, quercetin‐3‐ O ‐α‐ l ‐rhamnoside, honokiol and magnolol. The conditions of an Agilent 1200 HPLC were: YMC‐Pack‐ODS‐AQ column (250 × 4.6 mm id S‐5 μm, 12 nm), mobile phase acetonitrile and 0.2% phosphoric acid in a gradient elute mode, flow rate 1.0 mL/min, detection wavelength 280 nm and column temperature 30°C. The analytical method was validated in terms of linearity, stability, repeatability, precision and recovery tests. While performing fingerprint analysis, we identified 11 peaks as characteristic peaks and assessed the similarities of 17 samples collected from different geological regions of China. The peak areas were used to evaluate the variation in the chemical composition of the tested samples. For this purpose, we performed hierarchical cluster analysis of the peak areas. Our results indicate that simultaneous determination of multiple ingredients could be done through chromatographic fingerprint analysis. Therefore, this high‐performance liquid chromatography fingerprint method was readily utilized to evaluate the quality of leaves of M. officinalis var. biloba , which are used in several traditional herbal preparations.