Eupatilin Content and HPLC Fingerprints of Fresh Leaves of <i>Artemisia argyi</i> from 52 Germplasm Resources

Artemisia argyi is a well-known medicinal plant which has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years. It is usually named Aicao or Aihao in China, and the leaves are processed and applied in moxibustion to treat different kinds of diseases. In order to select the best germplasm resource to grow high quality herbal products, we have compared the HPLC fingerprints profiles of 52 geographically different germplasm resources collected from 17 provinces of China. The results data were processed by similarity and hierarchical clustering analyses. In addition, common patterns of a typical local variety of A. argyi sourced in Henan province are established, and sample similarities were evaluated by selection of 14 typical chromatographic peaks of 10 samples and are found to vary between 0.664 and 0.969. The results show that the HPLC fngerprint analysis and quantitative analysis is a powerful tool to identify and control the quality of fresh A. argyi and related products. In addition, the content of a major secondary metabolite in the leaves of A. argyi known as eupatilin, which is a flavone with numerous bioactivities such as anticancer, anti-inflammation and anti ulcer has been determined for all the 52 samples by HPLC-DAD. The results provided great scientific basis for the research and development of the herb as popular products for the health care of human beings.