Determination of Ten Components in<i>Eucommia ulmoides</i>Oliver by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography with Dual Detectors

Abstract

Eucommia ulmoides Oliver is one of the oldest traditional Chinese medicines and food additives that has been widely used in China and other Asian countries. In this study, high-performance liquid chromatography with diode-array detection and evaporative light scattering detection was performed for the determination of chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid, pinoresinol-di-O-β-glucopyranoside, kaempferol, quercetin, isoquercitrin, aucubin, geniposide, genipin, and geniposidic acid in Eucommia ulmoides Oliver from different regions in China. The separation was performed by high-performance liquid chromatography with a C18 column using gradient elution with a mobile phase consisting of 0.1% formic acid–water and acetonitrile at a column temperature of 30°C. The diode array wavelength range was set from 210 to 400 nm and the optimized chromatographic wavelengths were 238 nm and 320 nm. All compounds were separated in 75 minutes and quantified with good linear calibration curves (determination coefficients R2 > 0.9965). The method showed good precision with overall inter-day coefficients of variation between 1.78% and 3.37%. The recoveries were 98.11%–103.85% for the analytes. This method was successfully applied to quantify ten components in Eucommia ulmoides Oliver samples from eight different regions in China and may provide quality assessment for this material.