Simultaneous Determination of Four Compounds in a Nelumbo nucifera Seed Embryo by HPLC-DAD

Nelumbo nucifera has a variety of biological activities. So it was importantly used as various herbal medicines since traditional times. A simple, fast, and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method was developed in this study for efficient quality control of N. nucifera. Four different compounds, including neferine, 1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-1-[(4-hydroxyphenyl) methyl]-2-methyl-7-isoquinolinol, 1-hydroxy-2-methylpropene, and 3-(prop-1-enyl)benzene-1,2,4,5-tetrol, were simultaneously determined. The four compounds were isolated through a Dionex C18 column by gradient elution with 0.1% TFA-water and methanol. The flow rate was 1.0 mL/min, and the wavelength was detected at 205, 254, 280, and 330 nm. The chromatograms were acquired at 205 nm. The four compounds showed good linear relationships (r2>0.96) over five different concentrations, and an average recovery of the method ranged from 96.27% to 108.78%. Through the analysis validation test and application of the method, the optimized conditions verified that it is efficient to isolate the compounds of N. nucifera seed embryos.