Determination of the volatile constituents in radix Flemingiae Philippinensis by GC-MS and a heuristic evolving latent projection method.

With the help of chemometric resolution methods, a technique for qualitative and quantitative determination of the volatile chemical constituents in radix Flemingiae Philippinensis by chromatography-mass spectrometry was developed. After the overlapping chromatographic peaks were resolved into pure chromatograms and spectra using a heuristic evolving latent projections (HELP) method, qualitative analysis was performed by similarity search of the obtained pure mass spectrum of each component in the NIST library and the quantitative results were obtained by calculating the total two-way response volume. A total of 63 components were separated and 55 components were identified, accounting for 90.62% of the total content. The main components were farnesol isomer and beta-caryophyllene, accounting for 31.33% and 12.60% of the total content, respectively. The obtained results can provide useful information for further study and development of radix Flemingiae Philippinensis.