Establishment Of Detection Method And Determination Of Contents Of Active Components In Cordyceps And Products

Cordyceps sinensis is a species of edible and medicinal fungi that is scarce anduseful. It is considered as nutritional and healthy products because of its specialfunction in anticancer and antivirus. The growing districts of Cordyceps are mainly inhigh altitude and cold area in China, such as Tibet, Yunnan provinces and so on, so itis hard to be artificially cultivated, and its price increases very high. As a lot of fakeCordyceps appeared in the market, it’s urgent to develop efficient analytical methodsto evaluate related products. The content of five nucleosides, cordycepin, ergosterol,amino acid and metal elements of three Ophiocordyceps sinensis samples and oneCordyceps militaris sample collected from three provinces and three related productswere detected in this experiment, and the results would be helpful to monitor andcontrol the qualities of Cordyceps.The main results of this paper are summarized as follows:1. A determination method for cordycepin and adenosine using high pressureliquid chromatography was established. The effects of different extraction methods,extraction time and extraction solvents were studied to optimize the extract method,and the final extraction method is:0.5gram dried solid sample was weighed in100mL volumetric flask, ultrasoniclly extracted for180minutes with80mL pure water,mixed and filled the volumetric flask at room temperature.1mL of the solution wascentrifuged and the supernatant was filtrated with0.45μm MCM microporousmembranes for HPLC analysis. As for liquid sample,5gram sample was ultrasonicllyextracted with40mL pure water for30minutes in50mL volumetric flask, and otherprocedures are the same as solid samples. The linearity of the method was high in therange of1-50μg/mL, the recovery is between93.5%and99.7%, and thereproducibilities among seven laboratories were good enough.2. The contents of five nucleosides were determined based on the establishedmethod for cordycepin, and then, the contents of ergosterol, D-mannitol, amino acids and some metals in all samples were detected. The results showed that, cordycepinwas only found in Cordyceps militaris and Cordyceps tablet, the levels were about2.404and34.021mg/g respectively. The total content of other four nucleosides wasthe highes in Cordyceps militaris that reached to3.96mg/g, while Yunnan Cordycepshad the lowest content of about2.24mg/g. The content of ergosterol was highest inCordyceps militaris which was twice as the Tibet Cordyceps and thrice as the QinghaiOphiocordyceps. The content of cordycepin in Tibet Ophiocordyceps was about159.886mg/g that was the highest among the four Cordyceps, and the amounts ofcordycepin in these four samples were significantly different at P=0.01. The contentsof amino acid in four samples were significantly different at P=0.05, and YunnanOphiocordyceps had the highest content of about29.302g/100g. The differencebetween Yunnan and Tibet Ophiocordyceps, in the content of Mg, is not significantwhile P=0.05. The former was1.554mg/g and the latter is1.544mg/g. QinghaiOphiocordyceps had the highest content of Cu which was about20.127mg/kg, whileTibet Ophiocordyceps had the highest contents of Fe, that was791.653mg/kg. Thecontents of Zn and Mn were highest in Yunnan Cordyceps, which were145.589mg/kg and64.359mg/kg, respectively. Some kinds of the components were notdetected in Cordyceps liquid. There was an amount of cordycepin in Cordyceps tablet,which was about34.021mg/g. The content of ergosterol in Cordyceps capsule, whichwas1.983mg/g, was higher than that of Cordyceps tablet, and the content of totalamino acids in Cordyceps capsule, which is31.164g/100g, was twice the Cordycepstablet. The content of cordycepin in Cordyceps tablet is162.591mg/g, which is higherthan that of Cordyceps capsule.3. The contents of heavy metals, included Arsenic, Plumbum and Cadmium, in all thesamples were studied. The results showed that, the levels of Cadmium and Plumbumwere highest in Yunnan Cordyceps and Tibet Cordyceps, the former was29.008μg/kg,and the latter was211.395μg/kg, respectively. Tibet Ophiocordyceps had the highestcontents of total As, which is4.864mg/kg.The contents of Cadmium and Plumbum inCordyceps tablet were higher than that in Cordyceps capsule and Cordyceps liquid,which were13.174μg/kg and18.838μg/kg, respectively. The contents of other metals,besides those two heavy metals, in Cordyceps capsule were higher than those inCordyceps tablet.