Comparison of Chemical Constituents in Magnoliae Officinalis Cortex Processed by “Sweating” and “Non Sweating” based on Ultra Fast Liquid Chromatography-Triple Quadrupole-Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry and Gas Chromatography-Triple Quadrupole Mass Spectrometry Combined with Multivariate Statistical Analysis

Magnoliae Officinalis Cortex (MOC) is a commonly used traditional Chinese herbal medicine, which is always preliminarily processed by “sweating”. To explore the effects of primary processing on chemical constituents in MOC and the potential chemical markers for differentiating the samples processed by “sweating” and “non sweating”, a method is proposed based on ultra fast liquid chromatography-triple quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry (UFLC-Triple TOF MS/MS) and gas chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) coupled with multivariate statistical analysis. The obtained data were analyzed by principal component analysis and partial least-squares discriminant analysis. The nonvolatile constituents were identified according to MS accurate mass and MS/MS spectrometry fragmentation information, combined with the software of database search and literatures comparison. The volatile constituents were identified according to the NIST05 library and literatures. All of the results demonstrated that the chemical constituents in MOC samples processed by “sweating” and “non sweating” were clearly distinguished. Seventeen nonvolatile differential constituents and five volatile differential constituents were identified and presented in different change laws. This study will provide the basic information for revealing the difference of chemical constituents in MOC processed by “sweating” and “non sweating” and comprehensive evaluation of its quality.