Determination of patchoulic alcohol in Herba Pogostemonis by GC-MS-MS.

Patchoulic oil, the volatile oil of Pogostemon cablin (Blanco) Benth. and the Chinese crude drug Herba Pogostemonis, is widely used in the cosmetic and oral hygiene industries. Patchoulic alcohol is commonly used as an indicator for the quality assessment of dried P. cablin. However, the complexity of the herbal constituents makes it difficult for using conventional gas chromatography (GC) for analytical purpose. The present study established an accurate, sensitive and reproducible method for the quality assessment of the dried patchouli herb based on patchoulic alcohol content. A gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (GC/MS/MS) method has been successfully developed and demonstrated for the determination of patchoulic alcohol content in the samples of dried P. cablin. The developed method was found to be convenient and facile in particular to tackle the complicated matrix problems always encountered in the herbs which contain high level of essential oils.