Flavonoid aglycone-oriented data-mining in high-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry: efficient and targeted profiling of flavonoids in Scutellaria barbata.

The high-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-QTOF-MS/MS) technique is a powerful tool for compound identification in complex natural products. However, untargeted MS/MS data analysis needs skillful experience and sometimes neglects minor compounds, which are co-eluted with major ones or overshadowed by the matrix. Flavonoids are the main bioactive components in Scutellaria barbata, and the total flavonoid content is 47.