Effects of Growing Location on the Contents of Main Active Components and Antioxidant Activity of Dasiphora fruticosa (L.) Rydb. by Chemometric Methods.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a very important raw material source for natural medicines in China. The content and activity of active component are main indexes that evaluate the quality of TCM, however, they may vary with environmental factors. In this study, the effects of environmental factors on the active component contents and antioxidant activity of Dasiphora fruticosa collected from the five main growing areas of China were investigated. The contents of tannin, total flavonoids and rutin were determined to be 7.65 - 10.69%, 2.30 - 5.39% and 0.18 - 0.81%, respectively. Antioxidant activity was determined by DPPH assay, with the DPPH IC50 values ranged from 8.791 to 32.534 μg mL-1 . In order to further explore the cause of these significant geographical variations, the chemometric methods including correlation analysis, principal component analysis, gray correlation analysis and path analysis were applied. The results showed that environmental factors had significant effect on the contents of active components and antioxidant activity. Rapidly available phosphorus (RAP) and rapidly available nitrogen (RAN) were common dominant factors, and a significant positive action existed between RAP and active components and antioxidant activity (P < 0.05). Contributed by their high active components and strong antioxidant activity, Bange in Tibet and Geermu in Qinghai Province were selected as a favorable growing location, respectively.