A new approach for authentication of four ginseng herbs and their related products based on the simultaneous quantification of 19 ginseng saponins by UHPLC-TOF/MS coupled with OPLS-DA

White ginseng, red ginseng, notoginseng and American ginseng are commonly called ginseng herbs and are frequently used as traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and dietary supplements in China. Although their functions are evidently different, the discrimination of the four varieties still remains a challenge, especially for the deeply processed products which have lost their botanical morphological features and share similar chemical profiles. The chemometric approach is now the frequently used pattern recognition method for botanical origin discrimination. In the present study, OPLS-DA was employed to discriminate the four varieties using 19 major ginsenosides as variables, which were accurately measured by using UHPLC-TOF/MS. A clear separation of the four varieties was observed in the OPLS-DA score plot. The constructed model proved to be able to discriminate 10% of adulteration. Furthermore, this model showed high accuracy in authenticating the botanical origin of the deeply processed ginseng products. The results also showed that adulteration could be identified for some ginseng herb products in the market.