Comprehensive Chemical Profiling in the Ethanol Extract of <i>Pluchea indica</i> Aerial Parts by Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry Analysis of Its Silica Gel Column Chromatography Fractions

Abstract

Pluchea indica Less. is a medicine and food dual-use plant, which belongs to the Pluchea genus, Asteraceae family. Its main constituents are quinic acids, flavonoids, thiophenes, phenolic acids, as well as sesquiterpenes. In order to provide a comprehensive chemical profiling of P. indica, an orthogonal chromatography combining reverse-phase chromatography BEHC18 column with a normal-phase chromatography silica column as the separation system and a ESI-Q-Orbitrap MS as the detector in both positive and negative ion modes were used. According to the retention time (tR) and the exact mass-to-charge ratio (m/z), 67 compounds were unambiguously identified by comparing to the standard references. Moreover, 47 compounds were tentatively speculated on the basis of the rules of MS/MS fragmentation pattern and chromatographic elution order generalized from the above-mentioned reference standards. Among them, 10 of them were potentially novel.

Keywords

• <i>Pluchea indica</i> Less.
• orthogonal chromatography
• normal-phase chromatography silica column separation
• reversed-phase liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry analysis
• chemical profiling