[RP-HPLC characteristics of Panax notoginseng].

To develop the chemical characteristics of Panax notoginseng in order to control its quality. The samples was extracted using pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) and analyzed by HPLC-DAD. The data were evaluated using the "similarity evaluation system for chromatographic fingerprint of TCM" software (version 2004A). The chromatographic characteristics of 28 Panax notoginseng from different places were established using HPLC-DAD, and 8 peaks among 13 typical ones in the chromatograms were identified by comparing with their reference compounds. The similarity of different samples was high (0.982 +/- 0.008, RSD = 0.78%). The chromatographic characteristics are useful to control the quality of Panax notoginseng.