Discrimination of DifferentGanodermaSpecies and their Region Based on GC-MS Profiles of Sterols and Pattern Recognition Techniques

A GC-MS method based on the profiling of sterol peaks has been applied first for the discrimination of different Ganoderma species and their region. Six common sterol peaks were found and identified to be the discriminant variables. Pattern recognition analyses such as hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and discriminant analysis (DA) were used to deal with the data set of sterol profiles, and the results showed that there are definite differences among the different Ganoderma samples. This could provide another approach for the classification of Ganoderma samples in addition to conventional methods based on the profiling of triterpenoids and polysaccharides.