ABSTRACT
UPLC-Q-TOF-MS was used to analyze the chemical differences in Bupleurum. chinense,B. marginatum,B. marginatum var. stenophyllum and B. smithii var. parvifolium. Chromatographic separation was carried out on an Acquity HSS T3 C_(18) column( 2. 1 mm ×100 mm,1. 8 μm,Waters) with the mobile phase composed of 0. 1% formic acid in water-acetonitrile in the gradient elution. A hybrid quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry( Q-TOF-MS~E) was used for mass spectrometric analysis. Finally,25 peaks were identified based on their exact mass data and fragmentation characteristics. B.chinense,B.marginatum,B. marginatum var. stenophyllum and B. smithii var. parvifolium were obviously clustered into 3 types through processing by principal component analysis( PCA). There was almost no difference between B. chinense and B. marginatum. However,the compounds existed in B. chinense were different from those in B. marginatum var. stenophyllum,and B. smithii var. parvifolium.