Holistic quality evaluation of commercial Agastache rugosa by multiple chromatographic and chemometric analysis

In present study, a comprehensive strategy integrating multiple chromatographic and chemometric methods to simultaneously characterize the volatile and non-volatile components was developed for the holistic quality evaluation of commercial Agastache rugosa (AR), a common edible and medicinal herb, collected in China. The volatile components and the non-volatile components were characterized by GC-MS and UPLC-QTOF-MS/MS, respectively. And the data were analyzed either independently or integratively by multivariate statistical analysis (MVS) for the quality assessment of commercial samples. The results revealed that the commercial AR samples were different in both the composition and the content of volatile components. However, the compositions of non-volatile components in commercial AR were generally similar, whereas the contents of some components were different. All the results indicated that the holistic quality of commercial AR was inconsistent, and the commercial samples collected could be classified into two main groups, the volatile components were majorly responsible for the classification. Whether or not the holistic quality variations affect the efficacy of AR deserves further investigation.