Rapid and automatic chemical identification of the medicinal flower buds of Lonicera plants by the benchtop and hand-held Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy

• Published in: Spectrochimica acta. Part A, Molecular and biomolecular spectroscopy Molecular and biomolecular spectroscopy, 2017-07, Vol.182, p.81-86
• Main Authors: Chen, Jianbo, Guo, Baolin, Yan, Rui, Sun, Suqin, Zhou, Qun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Chemical fingerprints; Lonicerae Flos; Lonicerae Japonicae Flos; Mid-infrared spectroscopy; Quality control
• ISSN: 1386-1425
• DOI: 10.1016/j.saa.2017.03.070

With the utilization of the hand-held equipment, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy is a promising analytical technique to minimize the time cost for the chemical identification of herbal materials. This research examines the feasibility of the hand-held FT-IR spectrometer for the on-site testing of herbal materials, using Lonicerae Japonicae Flos (LJF) and Lonicerae Flos (LF) as examples. Correlation-based linear discriminant models for LJF and LF are established based on the benchtop and hand-held FT-IR instruments. The benchtop FT-IR models can exactly recognize all articles of LJF and LF. Although a few LF articles are misjudged at the sub-class level, the hand-held FT-IR models are able to exactly discriminate LJF and LF. As a direct and label-free analytical technique, FT-IR spectroscopy has great potential in the rapid and automatic chemical identification of herbal materials either in laboratories or in fields. This is helpful to prevent the spread and use of adulterated herbal materials in time. [Display omitted] •For the first time the hand-held FT-IR spectrometer is used for herb identification.•The medicinal flower buds of five kinds of Lonicera plants are discriminated.•Benchtop and hand-held FT-IR recognition models are built for lab and field demands.•Hand-held FT-IR shows great potential in the process analysis of herbal materials.