Abstract: The content of active constituents in Chinese herbal medicine is a key indicator for judging their qualities. In this study, the methods were established for analyzing total and three major flavonoids in Mosla chinensis, respectively, and the differences of the flavonoid contents in different tissues were also compared, which will favour the exploitation of the flavonoids in M.chinensis. The results showed that the optimized spectrophotometry for the determination of total flavonoid content was specific and stable, and the HPLC method for the analysis of luteolin, apigenin and negletein presented a good linear relationship (r>0.999) in the range of the determination and the recovery ranges were 98.77%~102.13% with less than 5% RSDs. The study also found that the content of total flavonoids in different parts of M.chinensis from high to low was bud＞tip＞stem＞root, and the total flavonoid content in M.chinensis from Jiangxi was higher than that from Zhejiang. These prompt that genunie medicinal materials should be selected for the industrial production of the flavonoids from M.chinensis as more as possible, and the root and the lower end of stem may be considered to discard, so as to improve the extraction efficiency and increase economic benefits. In brief, the developed methods are accurate and steady for detecting total and three major flavonoids in M.chinensis, and we also confirmed total flavonoids were mainly enriched in and near the bud of M.chinensis, which would provide a theoretical basis and scientific guidance for further exploiting the resources in M.chinensis.

Key words: Mosla chinensis, total flavonoids, luteolin, apigenin, negletein, RP-HPLC