Comparative study on volatile oils of four Panax genus species in Southeast Asia by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

Abstract Four Panax genus species ( Panax notoginseng ( PN ), Panax stipuleanatus ( PS ), Panax vietnamensis ( PV ) and Panax japonicus ( PJ )) are all distributed in Southeast Asia. Besides PN , the other three species attracted little attention because of their limited distribution area, less wide application or relatively low quantity. PN had been cultivated as an industrial crop for hundreds years in China while the other three species as substitutes for PN in minority ethnic groups had no large-scale cultivation until now. The saponins of the four medical plants had been investigated in previous study while there has been virtually no reports describing their other compounds. In this study, the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS) was used to compare the volatile oils compounds of the four species. A total of 146 compounds were identified among all the species and every species contained compounds with similar quantity (all about 70). The falcarinol (28.86%) and andrographolide (38.35%) were the main compositions for PN . Furthermore, falcarinol was the dominant composition for PV (70.65%) and PS (64.61%), while pentadecanoic acid and ledene oxide-(II) were the high content compounds for PJ , accounting 9.31% and 8.39%, respectively. In addition, hierarchical clustering analysis was conducted to evaluate the relationship between the four Panax species based on contents (%) of chemical constituents in volatile oils. The results indicated that the PV and PS exhibited high similarity of volatile oils compounds. The PN , PV and PS could be used as the raw materials of falcarinol presenting well biological activities.