Abstract: A method for the simultaneous determination of berberine, palmatine, jatrorrhizine, magnoflorine and coptisine from Rhizoma Coptidis samples based on the nonaqueous capillary electrophoresis (NACE) mode has been developed. The effects of several important factors, such as nonaqueous solvents, running buffer system and its concentration and pH, separation voltage, temperature and detection wavelength, were investigated to acquire the optimum conditions. The optimum conditions for the separation were as follows: the selected running buffer was a methanol solution (pH 5.8) containing 40 mmol/L sodium acetate and 40 mmol/L ammonium acetate; the separation voltage was 25 kV; detection wavelength was set at 254 nm; the sample was injected at 5 kPa×6 s and the column temperature was maintained at 20 ℃. The analytes can be obtained good baseline resolutions in a 64.5 cm×75 μm capillary (56 cm of effective length) within 20 min. The average recoveries of the established method were between 98.37% and 101.03%. The method is simple, accurate and reproducible, and can be used for the quality control analysis of Rhizoma Coptidis.

Key words: berberine, coptisine, jatrorrhizine, magnoflorine, palmatine, Rhizoma Coptidis , nonaqueous capillary electrophoresis (NACE)