Identification of Panax notoginseng Powders from Different Root Parts Using Electronic Nose and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

In order to identify Panax notoginseng powders from different root parts, an electronic nose and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) were used to analyze the volatile components of the whole root powder, rhizome powder, taproot powder, lateral root powder and fibrous root powder of P. notoginseng. The data obtained were analyzed by multiple comparison. The statistical learning method was used to extract eight time-domain features from the response curves of the electronic nose, and correlation analysis was carried out. Three feature selection algorithms were used to reduce the dimension of the feature data. Classification models were built using support vector machine (SVM), least square support vector machine (LSSVM) or extreme learning machine (ELM) based on the original feature data or the three kinds of feature selection data. The grey wolf optimization (GWO) algorithm was introduced to optimize the parameters gam and sig2 in the classification model. The results showed that a total of 31 volatile compounds were detected in the five P. notoginseng powders. The best GWO-IRIV-LSSVM model could effectively distinguish the electronic nose data, with 97.5% accuracy for the test set. Moreover, the volatile composition of the five samples differed mainly in terms of the contents of total volatiles, alkanes, and aromatic compounds, which was consistent with the results of GC-MS. The method used in this study can be used for the detection of high-quality P. notoginseng powder from geo-authentic production areas mixed with low-quality P. notoginseng powder.