Research on FTIR Fingerprints of Soil and Regional Selection of Chinese Herbal Medicine Cultivation

The geographical choice of Chinese herbal medicine is an important research issue in Traditional Chinese Medicine. By using high resolution FTIR technique, 53 soil samples were investigated in the comparative study. The results showed that soil samples at 3621, 3425, 1642, 1435, 1029, 878, 760 and 690 cm^-1 had community peaks. However, their relative intensities were variant, in addition, the peaks at 1796, 2982 and 2874 cm^-1 were not the same which can be objectively used to differentiate soil in distinct regions. Moreover, the experiments showed that the soil conditions in Tianshui and Dingxi of Gansu province in China were similar to the counterpart in Shanxi province in China. We conclude that FT-IR spectroscopy can not only provide rather valuable information for Chinese herbal medicine transplanting but for soil research.