Discrimination of five species of Fritillaria and its extracts by FT-IR and 2D-IR

Bulbus Fritillariae (in Chinese named Beimu), referred to the bulbs of several Fritillaria species (Liliaceae), is a commonly used anti-tussive and expectorant herb in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for more than 2000 years. The objective of this study is to discriminate five species of Beimu herbs and their total alkaloid extracts by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), second derivative infrared spectroscopy, and two-dimensional correlation infrared spectroscopy (2D-IR) under thermal perturbation. The structural information of the samples indicated that, Beimu and their extract residues contain a large amount of starch, since some characteristic absorption peaks of the starch, such as 1158, 1080, 1015 and 987 cm−1 can be observed. Further more, the characteristic absorption peaks of the sulfate which arouse at 1120 ± 5 and 618 cm−1 in the IR spectra of Beimu aqueous extracts can be find. This validated that people used the sulfur fumigation method in the processing. The macroscopical fingerprint characters of FT-IR and 2D-IR spectra can not only provide the information of main chemical constituents in medicinal materials and their different extracts, but also compare the components differences among the similar samples. In conclusion, the multi-steps IR macro-fingerprint method is rapid, effective, visual and accurate for pharmaceutical research.