LAUSR

BACKGROUND Astragali Radix (AR) is widely used because of its dual use in medicine and food. Wild Astragali Radix from Hunyuan county of Shanxi Province in China is accepted as a geo-authentic medicine with high quality and good medicinal effects. Multi-elements of Astragali Radix partially reflect its efficacy and safety. However, there is no systemic research about the elemental analysis of geo-authentic Astragali Radix until now. OBJECTIVE In this paper, multi-elemental profiling of Astragali Radix from Gansu, Jilin, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces in China was implemented. METHODS A microwave digestion coupled with ICP-MS, principle component analysis and partial-least square-discriminate analysis were used for the analysis of unique elemental accumulation ability of Shanxi wild-type. RESULTS For 53 stably detected elements, the contents of most elements (Ba, Cs, Ga, La, Pr and so on) were significantly higher while some others (Cd, Cu, P, W and Zn) were significantly lower in wild Astragali Radix from Shanxi than those of the samples from Gansu, Jilin, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi provinces and the cultivated samples from Shanxi. After binary logistic regression, combinational variable Ba-P was found to be a good marker to identify wild Astragali Radix of Shanxi Province from the samples with other origins, and the total positive prediction probability of the test samples from both market and their original field could reach 93.8% through external validation using the model. CONCLUSIONS Multi-elemental analysis coupled with PCA, PLS-DA, nonparametric analysis and binary logistic regression can be a good tool for the identification of wild Astragali Radix from Shanxi Province. HIGHLIGHTS An ICP-MS method was developed and validated for multi-elements. Fifty-three elements in Astragali Radix from differential origins were compared. The wild Astragali Radix from Shanxi had unique elemental characteristics. Combinational variable Ba-P is a good marker to identify wild-type from Shanxi.