Comparative quality of the forms of decoction pieces evaluated by multidimensional chemical analysis and chemometrics: Poria cocos, a pilot study

Publication date: Available online 21 March 2019Source: Journal of Food and Drug AnalysisAuthor(s): Li-Xia Zhu, Jun Xu, Yun Wu, Li-Fei Su, Kelly Yin Ching Lam, Elizabeth R. Qi, Xiao-Ping Dong, Hu-Biao Chen, Yu-De Liu, Zhong-Zhen ZhaoAbstractMany Chinese medicinal materials (CMMs) are parts of plants or fungi that have been processed into different physical forms, termed decoction pieces, that are typically boiled in water for consumption. One CMM may have several decoction pieces forms, e.g., slices, small cubes (dice), or grains. The specifications that have different morphological parameters (shape, size and thickness) for these various decoction pieces have been developed over, in some cases, centuries of practice. Nevertheless, whether and how the form of decoction pieces affects the extraction (decoction) dynamics, and quality stability during storage has not been studied. Here, we investigated Poria cocos (PC) as a pilot study; we explore how the form of PC decoction pieces affects its chemistry using multidimensional chemical evaluation such as Ultra-performance liquid chromatography-photodiode array-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-PDA-QTOF-MS/MS), Ultra-performance liquid chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QqQ-MS/MS) and high performance gel permeation chromatography coupled with charged aerosol detector (HPGPC-CAD), combined with analysis of variance (ANOVA), principal component analysis (PCA), factor analysis (FA) and hierar...
Source: Journal of Food and Drug Analysis - Category: Food Science Source Type: research