Digital identification and adulteration analysis of Codonopsis Radix and Stellariae Radix based on the "digital identity" of chemical compositions

Xianrui Wang; Jiating Zhang; Wenguang Jing; Xiaohan Guo; Minghua Li; Xianlong Cheng; Feng Wei

doi:10.3389/fchem.2024.1438321

Digital identification and adulteration analysis of Codonopsis Radix and Stellariae Radix based on the "digital identity" of chemical compositions

Front Chem. 2024 Nov 7:12:1438321. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2024.1438321. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Xianrui Wang¹, Jiating Zhang¹, Wenguang Jing¹, Xiaohan Guo¹, Minghua Li¹, Xianlong Cheng¹, Feng Wei¹

Affiliation

¹ Institute for Control of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ethnic Medicine, National Institutes for Food and Drug Control, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Introduction: Under the background of digitalization of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), this study aimed to realize the digital identification and adulteration analysis of Codonopsis Radix (CR) and Stellariae Radix (SR) based on chemical analysis.

Methods: This study combined digitalization concepts and chemical analysis and conducted a chemical analysis of CR and SR from different batches based on UHPLC-QTOF-MS^E. Furthermore, the shared ions were extracted from different batches of CR and SR as their "ion characterization" after digital quantization. Then, the data matrices of unique ions of CR relative to SR and SR relative to CR were screened out, and the top-N ions were outputted as the "digital identities" of CR and SR, sorted by ionic strength. Finally, the above "digital identities" of CR and SR were used as benchmarks for matching positive samples and market samples to provide feedback on the matching credibility (MC) for identification and adulteration analysis.

Results: The results showed that based on the "digital identities" of CR and SR, the digital identification of CR, SR, and positive samples can be realized at the individual level of TCM efficiently and accurately, even if 3% of SR in the mixed samples can still be identified efficiently and accurately. Moreover, 1 of the 12 batches of market samples was identified as an adulterated sample.

Conclusion: It proved that the identification and adulteration analysis of two herbs can be realized efficiently and quickly through the "digital identities" of chemical compositions. It has important reference significance for developing the digital identification of CR and SR at the individual level of Chinese medicine based on the "digital identity" of chemical compositions, which was beneficial to the construction of digital quality control of CR and SR.

Keywords: Codonopsis Radix; Stellariae Radix; adulteration analysis; chemical analysis; digital identification; digital identity.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The research was funded by the National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFC3504105)—“Study on rapid identification of Chinese traditional medicine varieties based on the digital identity of chemical composition”—and the Key Laboratory Project of Quality Control of Chinese Herbal Medicines and Decoction Pieces (2022GSMPA-KL03)—“Establishment of a rapid detection platform for adulterated dyeing and addition of Chinese herbal medicines and pieces.”