Identification of Vernonia patula Merr. and Its Similar Varieties Based on a Combination of HPLC Fingerprinting and Chemical Pattern Recognition

TL;DR

This study uses chemical analysis to distinguish the traditional medicine Vernonia patula from similar plant varieties.

Contribution

A novel method combining HPLC fingerprinting and chemical pattern recognition is introduced for accurate plant identification.

Findings

HPLC fingerprints showed high similarity within each plant variety but low similarity between varieties.

Isochlorogenic acid A and C were unique to Vernonia patula, while preconene II was found in similar varieties.

Cluster analysis and PLS-DA confirmed distinct groupings of the four plant varieties.

Abstract

Vernonia patula Merr. (VP) is a traditional medicine used by the Zhuang and Yao people, known for its therapeutic properties in treating anemopyretic cold and other diseases. Distinguishing VP from similar varieties such as Praxelis clematidea (PC), Ageratum conyzoides L. (AC) and Ageratum houstonianum Mill (AH) was challenging due to their similar traits and plant morphology. The HPLC fingerprints of 40 batches of VP and three similar varieties were established. SPSS 20.0 and SIMCA-P 13.0 were used to statistically analyze the chromatographic peak areas of 37 components. The results showed that the similarity of the HPLC fingerprints for each of the four varieties was >0.9, while the similarity between the control chromatogram of VP and its similar varieties was <0.678. Cluster analysis and partial least squares discriminant analysis provided consistent results, indicating that all four varieties could be individually clustered together. Through further analysis, we found isochlorogenic acid A and isochlorogenic acid C were present only in the original VP, while preconene II was present in the three similar varieties of VP. These three components are expected to be identification points for accurately distinguishing VP from PC, AC and AH.

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