Quality assessment of Curcuma longa L. by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry fingerprint, Principle Components Analysis and Hierarchical Clustering Analysis

Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) fingerprint analysis, Principle Components Analysis (PCA), and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) were introduced for quality assessment of Curcuma longa L (C longa). The GC-MS fingerprint method was developed and validated by analyzing 33 batches of samples of C longa from different geographic locations 18 chromatographic peaks were selected as characteristic peaks and their relative peak areas (RPA) were calculated for quantitative expression. Two principal components (PCs) were extracted by PCA C longa collected from Guizhou and Fujian were separated from other samples by PC1, capturing 71 83% of variance. While, PC2 contributed for their further separation,. capturing 11 BOX. of variance. HCA confirmed the result of PCA analysis. Therefore, GC-MS Fingerprint study with chemometric techniques provides a very flexible and reliable method for quality assessment of C longa