HPLC analysis of bioactive flavonoids from the rhizome of Alpinia officinarum

Alpinia officinarum Hance, a famous traditional Chinese medicine, has been used as an aromatic stomachic, analgesic, and antiemetic in Asia. To evaluate the quality of A. officinarum Hance, a sensitive, simple and accurate high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method was developed for the assessment of two major bioactive flavonoids: galangin and 3-O-methyl galangin. The HPLC system used a Spherisob octadecylsilyl silica (ODS) column with methanol–water–phosphoric acid (60–38–2) as the mobile phase and detection at 254 nm. Separation of the two compounds was achieved by the HPLC method above and they showed good linear relationships in the range of 0.3–1.4 μg for galangin and 0.02–0.14 μg for 3-O-methyl galangin. The correlation coefficients of the calibration curve for the analytes was higher than 0.999. In addition, the content of these two flavonoids in the rhizome of A. officinarum growing at twelve different locations in China was determined to establish the effectiveness of the method.