Poria (Indian Buead) is the dried sclerotium of the fungus Poria cocos (Schw.) Wolf (Fam. Polyporaceae) that grows around the roots of old, dead pine trees. It is a well-known traditional Chinese medicine to treat diabetes, dysentery, chronic fatigue syndrome, diarrhea, dizziness, edema, insomnia, kidney problems, nervousness, urination problems, and weakness. Apart from being herbal medicine, P. cocos has also been used to make food supplements, Chinese cuisines like soups, dishes, tea as well as healthy snacks and desserts such as biscuits, cakes and bread for its health promotion benefits in China and the other countries of East Asia.

Prof. ZHOU Yan's group of Chengdu Institute of Biology collaborated with Prof. XU Hongxi of Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine found all the main triterpenoids in P. cocos presented an exact neutral loss scan of CH₂O₃. Based on this finding, a new method based on UPLC–QTOF–MS was developed for the selective detection of triterpenoids in Poria cocos. The main chemical constituents of P. cocos are polysaccharides, triterpenoids, egosterol and proteins, in which triterpenoids were found to possess interesting pharmacological actions such as cytotoxic and anti-oxidant, anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, and etc. and were reported to have bitter taste.

Moreover, the developed method was capable of targeted detection of known and unknown triterpenoids in P. cocos samples. The highly selective nature of the method simplifies chromatographic analysis and facilitates tentative compounds identification utilizing UPLC chromatographic elution order. This approach was then applied to analyze 40 batches of P. cocos samples and a total of 31 triterpenoids were unequivocally or tentatively identified. The similarity and difference of these samples were further investigated by chemometric analyses, which provided chemical markers for origin identification and authenticity establishment of P. cocos. The developed method provided a convenient approach which might be applied for rapid bitterness evaluation, quality control and authenticity establishment of P. cocos.

More results have been published in Food Chemistry, 2014, 152: 237-244.