| Abstract: | Dihydroartemisinic acid (DHAA) is the direct precursor to artemisinin, an effective anti‐malaria compound from Artemisia annua L. (A. annua ), and it can be transformed to artemisinin without the catalysis of enzyme. A rapid and sensitive analysis of DHAA in A. annua is needed to screen excellent plant resources aimed to improve artemisinin production. In order to develop a rapid and sensitive determination method for DHAA in plant, the extraction and analysis conditions were extensively investigated in the present work. As a result, extraction of powdered A. annua leaves at 55°C for 50 min with chloroform resulted in the highest yield of DHAA, with a recovery of >98%. The precision of this gas chromatographic procedure ranged from 1.22 to 2.94% for intra‐day and from 1.69 to 4.31% for inter‐day, respectively. The accuracy was 99.55–103.02% for intra‐day and 98.86–99.98% for inter‐day, respectively. The measured LOQ and LOD values of the proposed method reached 5.00 and 2.00 μg/mL, respectively. Validation indicated the method was robust, quick, sensitive and adequate for DHAA analysis. |
