Effects of 2 Drying Methods on 3 Effective Ingredients Contents in Vaccinium dunalianum

Drying methods affect the retention content of phytochemicals. In order to compare the content difference of main components in different tissues of Vaccinium dunalianum under 2 drying methods of hot air drying(HAD) and natural air drying(NAD). Mature leaves, tender leaves and flower buds of wild V. dunalianum plants from Wuding County, Chuxiong Prefecture, Yunnan Province were dried via HAD(45 ℃) and NAD, and their contents of arbutin, chlorogenic acid and 6′−O−caffeoylarbutin(CA) were determined by high performance liquid chromatography(HPLC). The results showed that the contents of arbutin, chlorogenic acid and CA in different tissue samples of V. dunalianum treated with NAD were significantly higher than those treated with HAD(45 ℃) (P<0.05). Moreover, the difference of the other contents between the 2 drying methods was also extremely significant(P<0.01) except for the contents of arbutin in tender leaves(TL−HP) and flower buds(FB−ZX). The above results showed that the NAD method significantly increased the contents of main effective ingredients in V. dunalianum compared with the HAD method under other conditions unchanged. Therefore, the NAD method should be chosen instead of HAD method that is often used in the drying treatment of V. dunalianum tissue samples, so as to improve the extraction contents of main effective ingredients.