Study on chemical fingerprinting of crude and processed Atractylodes macrocephala from different locations in Zhejiang province by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with hierarchical cluster analysis.

Background: In China, Atractylodes macrocephala is mainly distributed in Zhejiang province. It is, therefore, desirable to determine a reliable and accurate methodology to differentiate the samples collected from Zhejiang province. Although some studies on the fingerprints of Atractylodes macrocephala using HPLC have been published, none of them compared the processed product of Atractylodes macrocephala from different areas of Zhejiang province.