Abstract: A high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometric method has been developed for the simultaneous analysis of three minor curcuminoids in the crude extract of Curcuma longa L. After ultrasonic extraction with ethanol, the sample was separated on a Microsorb C18 column (250 mm×4.6 mm, 5 μm) with the gradient elution of acetonitrile and 0.1% (v/v) formic acid aqueous solution as mobile phase, then detected by electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry in multi-reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. On the basis of analysis of the fragmentation patterns, the identification of the minor ones was achieved in a single experiment using MRM with 8 precursor-product ion transitions for each component. Using this technique, the three minor curcuminoids were observed in C. longa L. for first time and the limit of detection was 0.2 μg/L. The experimental results show that this method is simple, rapid, accurate, sensitive and suitable for the analysis of curcuminoids in the complex samples of traditional Chinese medicine.

Key words: Curcuma longa L. , curcuminoids, minor constituents, multi-reaction monitoring (MRM) mode, high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS)