Abstract: To establish the UPLC fingerprint of Angelica dahurica,and to evaluate the quality of A. dahurica.Ultra-high performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) instrument and ACQUITY UPLC BEH C₁₈ (50 mm×2.1 mm,1.7 μm) chromatographic column was employed,the separation was performed with the mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile and water,and the detection wavelength was set at 254 nm to establish the UPLC fingerprint of ten batches of A. dahurica.Then,the further quality assessment of the drug from different medicinal origin and treatment was carried out by chemical identification of reference substance combined with similarity evaluation,cluster analysis (CA),principal component analysis (PCA),and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA).The method for fingerprint analysis was in agreement with methodological requirements.A total of 22 peaks were recognized as common peaks in the fingerprint,10 peaks were identified using reference substance.There was difference between the batches from different medicinal origin by similarity evaluation,CA and PCA.Sulfur fumigation had great influence on the quality of A. dahuricae.Finally,OPLS-DA method and inter-group difference analysis were used to select the main markers leading to the quality difference of A. dahurica.The validated UPLC fingerprint combined with chemical pattern recognition method can be used in the quality control and evaluation of A. dahurica.

Key words: Angelica dahurica, UPLC, fingerprint analysis, chemical pattern recognition, CA, PCA, OPLS-DA