Determination of carbohydrates in medicinal plants--comparison between TLC, mf-MELDI-MS and GC-MS

Introduction – Quality control in the pharmaceutical and phytopharmaceutical industries requires fast and reliable methods for the analysis of raw materials and final products. Objective – This study evaluates different analytical approaches in order to recognise the most suitable technique for the analysis of carbohydrates in herbal drug preparations. Methodology – The specific focus of the study is on thin‐layer chromatography (TLC), gas chromatography (GC), and a newly developed mass spectrometric method, i.e. matrix free material enhanced laser desorption/ionisation time of flight mass spectrometry (mf‐MELDI‐MS). Samples employed in the study were standards and microwave‐assisted water extracts from Quercus. Results – TLC analysis proved the presence of mono‐, di‐ and trisaccharides within the biological sample and hinted at the existence of an unknown carbohydrate of higher oligomerisation degree. After evaluation of different derivatisation techniques, GC‐MS confirmed data obtained via TLC for mono‐ to trisaccharides, delivering additionally quantified values under a considerable amount of time. A carbohydrate of higher oligomerisation degree could not be found. The application of mf‐MELDI‐MS further confirmed the presence of carbohydrates up to trisaccharides, also hinting at the presence of a form of tetrasaccharide. Besides this information, mf‐MELDI‐MS delivered further data about other substances present in the extract. Quantitative determination resulted in 1.750, 1.736 and 0.336 mg/mL for glucose, sucrose and raffinose respectively. Conclusion – Evaluation of all three techniques employed, clearly proved the heightened performance of mf‐MELDI‐MS for the qualitative analysis of complex mixtures, as targets do not need modification and analysis requires only a few minutes. In addition, GC‐MS is suitable for quantitative analysis. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.