Analysis on chemical constituents of Paeonia lactiflora Pall. by UPLC /Q-TOF-MS

An ultra-performance liquid chromatography /quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometric(UPLC /QTOF-MS) method was established to analyze chemical constituents of the methanol extract of Paeonia lactiflora Pall.in positive and negative modes.The chromatographic separation was performed on a Waters ACQUITY TM UPLC BEH C 18(100 × 2.1 mm,1.7 μm) using a mobile phase consisting of 0.1% formic acid water solution(A) and acetonitrile(B).The flow rate was 0.2 mL/min.The mass spectrometer was Waters ACQUITY QTOF-MS equipped with an electrospray ionization(ESI) interface in negative and positive modes.The chemical constituents of Paeonia lactiflora Pall.were well isolated and detected by this method.9 compounds were identified,and they were galloylsucrose,paeoniflorin sulfonate,albiflorin,paeoniflorin,galloylpaeoniflorin and its isomers,benzoylpaeoniflorin.The fragmentation pathway of paeoniflorin and albiflorin was inferred referring to the possible fragmentation.The results showed that the method was simple and rapid for the identification of the chemical constituents of Paeonia lactiflora Pall.