Age differentiation of Panax ginseng and structure analysis of key constituents using metabolomics technique

For the age differentiation of Panax ginseng, non-targeted analysis of hairy root of ginseng was performed using ultraperformance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-Tof MS) technique followed by multivariate analyses. Various classification methods were applied to find an optimal method which best describes the ginseng ages by selecting the influential metabolites of different ages. Through the metabolite selection process, several age-dependent key constituents having potential as biomarker candidates were determined, and their structures were identified by tandem mass and accurate mass with the comparison of the in-house ginsenosides library and literature data. This proposed method applied to the hairy root of P. ginseng showed the improved efficacy compared to our previous result using main roots for age differentiation, and the identified key metabolites can be used as biomarker candidates for the quality assurance in ginseng.