Nontargeted metabolomics of Korean and Chinese Platycodon grandiflorum using GC-TOF-MS: geographical-origin discrimination and metabolic pathway analysis via chemometrics.

Platycodon grandiflorum is an economically significant medicinal and edible plant in East Asia, whose chemical composition varies with cultivation location. In this study, a nontargeted metabolomics approach based on gas chromatography-time-of-flight mass spectrometry was combined with multivariate chemometrics to differentiate P. grandiflorum roots from Korea and China. Following sample derivatization, 53 primary metabolites, including amino acids, organic acids, sugars, and fatty acids, were putatively annotated. Principal component analysis showed origin-related clustering, and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) showed strong discrimination (R2, Q2 > 0.8). Chinese samples showed higher relative abundances of 1-monopalmitin, 4-hydroxybutanoic acid, hexose, formic acid, and linoleic acid, whereas Korean samples showed higher L-threonine. Metabolic pathway analysis identified linoleic acid metabolism as the pathway with the highest impact, and chemical-structure-based metabolite set enrichment analysis highlighted glycerolipids as a major differential chemical class. These findings provide a promising exploratory approach for geographical-origin discrimination of P. grandiflorum.