Profiling and discovery of volatile marker compounds for ginseng berries with different growth years by HS-SPME-GC-MS

Ginseng is a well-known traditional herb. The berries from ginseng are valued according to the age of the plant they are harvested from. Few studies have evaluated the relationship between the plant age and the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the ginseng berries. In this study, headspace solid-phase microextraction–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry was combined with multivariate statistical analysis to develop a rapid, simple, in situ, and non-destructive method to analyze variation in the VOCs in ginseng berries(GB) harvested from plants that were 3, 4, 5, 7, 14, and 18 years old. The contents of total saponins, crude polysaccharides, and total proteins were compared. Five pairs of samples were compared for the growth ages: 3 and 4 years, 3 and 5 years, 3 and 6 years, 3 and 7 years, 3 and 14 years, and 3 and 18 years. All groups showed an excellent discrimination rate of 100% in score plots from orthogonal partial least-squares discriminant analysis. Using the variable importance in prediction and P-value, 226 common differential compounds were identified. Among these compounds, 20 of them showed good age discrimination capabilities with area under the curve values of more than 0.8 in receiver operating characteristic analysis, but not all of them were suitable for all of the comparisons. The following three VOCs showed excellent discrimination capabilities with area under the curve values of 1.0 among all the five groups: tetradecane; naphthalene, 1,2,3,4,4a,5,6,8a-octahydro-4a,8-dimethyl-2-(1-methylethenyl)-, [2R(2α,4aα,8aβ)]-; and ledol. These compounds could be used as biomarkers. The berries obtained from 7-year-old plants had the highest total saponins (2.99 ± 0.25%) and crude polysaccharides (27.95 ± 0.99%) contents. The total protein content was highest in the berries from the 5-year-old plants (25.70 ± 0.89%). These results could provide a new insights of pathway for discriminating ginseng (roots) growth ages via non-medical parts used as GB and rational exploitation ginseng berry resources. ginseng berry products