The Rapid Discrimination and Quality Assessment of Three Species Using H NMR Spectrometry.

The husks and fruits of species (Rutaceae) are the popular pungent and spicy ingredients of foods and the traditional medicines in many countries. Three species, . , . , and . , are distributed and intermixed with each other as "Zanthoxyli Pericarpium" in Korean markets. In the present study, we analyzed the ethyl acetate-soluble and nonpolar fractions of samples by H NMR spectrometry and performed a multivariate analysis for finding the discriminant markers between three species. Xanthoxylin was identified as the metabolic marker for the discrimination of species and quantified by the qNMR approach.