A novel method for rapid discrimination of bulbus of Fritillaria by using electronic nose and electronic tongue technology

Abstract

Fritillaria, belonging to the family of Liliaceae, contains many species, and the bulbus of Fritillaria (BF) are the precious and widely used Chinese medical materials. The bulbus materials are commonly crushed into a powder form for their utilization, resulting in an inefficient discrimination of the materials, and leading to financial loss and even health hazards. In our present investigation, the electronic nose (E-nose) and electronic tongue (E-tongue) combined with chemometrics were applied to rapidly discriminate the bulbus of different Fritillaria species and to detect adulterations of Fritillariae cirrhosae bulbus (FCB) in the form of powder. First, four species of BF were collected and artificial adulterations of FCB were prepared by mixing it with other BF, coicis semen and wheat flour. Then, E-nose and E-tongue were used to detect the powder samples and multivariate statistical analyses, including principal component analysis (PCA) and discriminant factor analysis (DFA), were performed. Our results demonstrated that E-nose and E-tongue can effectively discriminate the bulbus of the four Fritillaria species, and the FCB adulterations can also be discriminated. The accurate rate of 100% was achieved by DFA for recognizing the bulbus of the different Fritillaria species and FCB, and their adulteration. For the discrimination of the specific adulterants, all the unknown samples were correctly recognized by DFA according to E-nose; in addition, an accurate rate of 80.95% was acquired by DFA according to E-tongue, and a successful recognition with an accurate rate of 100% was obtained after data fusion. Therefore, the proposed analyzing method based on E-nose and E-tongue is rapid and simple, and it can successfully discriminate the different species of BF and FCB mixed with the adulterants.