摘要
Curcuma wenyujin has been widely used as a traditional medicine in China. In this paper a strategy for the quantitative determination of the polysaccharide by a phenol-sulfuric acid method was described. Involved in three factors, 5% phenol volume, H2SO4 volume, and temperature of water bath, we adopted the L9（3）3 orthogonal array design to gain the optimal colorimetric method. 3.0 ml of polysaccharide solution, 1.0 ml, 5% phenol and 7.0 ml H2SO4 were mixed with constant stirring in a glass vessel, and then kept in a water bath at 40 ℃. After cooling to room temperature for 20 min, the absorbance values were recorded by the UV-2501 PC spectrometer at the wavelength range of 485 nm. The polysaccharide content in Curcuma wenyujin were 3.21%, 3.23%, 3.20%, 3.18~/0, 3.22% and 2.38%, respectively. All results showed that this method was adequate, valid and applicable, may be applied to the determination of other bacterial polysaccharide as well.
