[A rapid method for detecting seven kinds of American ginseng tea bags by FTIR spectroscopy]

A rapid and non-destructive method, was used to identify seven commercial American Ginseng Tea bags by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) in this paper. It could be seen from the results, that each sample has its own characteristic infrared spectrum. Also, the seven tea bags could be divided into two groups: one is made from pure Ginseng powders, and the other is made by Ginseng extractives and additives. The information of additives used by factories could be identified by IR spectra. For example, some factories use glucose, and the others use sucrose as the additives. Furthermore, the quality of the tea bags was identified by the intensity ratio of Ginsengs and additives. In HPLC, the total saponin in tea bags made from Ginseng powders is 4 times higher than that made by Ginseng extractives. Therefore, HPLC analysis gave the same result with FTIR. It is proved that FTIR is a very fast, simple and reliable method to identify Chinese medicine.