Abstract: An ultra-performance liquid chromatographycoupled with evaporative light scattering detector(UPLC-ELSD) method was developed to determine the contents of rhamnose, xylose,fructose,glucose and sucrose in the wild and cultivated Fructus Lycii from Qaidam Basin.The carbohydrates were separated on an ACQUITY UPLC BEH Amide column using acetonitrile-water(0.2% TEA in both solvents) as mobile phases.The flow rate was 0.15 mL/min with the column temperature set at 45 ℃.The drift tube temperature of  the ELSDwas set at 50 ℃ and the flowrate of N₂ was set at 40 psi.It was found that fructose and glucose were the major water-soluble sugar in the wild and cultivatedFructusLycii from Qaidam Basin.The limit of detection of fructose and glucose were 0.86 μg/mL and 0.64 μg/mL, respectively;the average recoveries(n=9) were 91.8%(RSD=1.66%) for fructose and 89.6%(RSD=2.55%) for glucose.The methodissensitive,reliable and accurate.It isapplicable to determine water-soluble sugar in FructusLycii.The result shows that quality of the cultivatedFructusLyciifrom Qaidam Basinis neatly excellent.However,the quality of wild Fructus Lycii has significant differences,which is suitable for the selective exploitation.

Key words: ultra-performance liquid chromatography, evaporative light scattering detector, Qaidam Basin, Fructus Lycii, water-soluble sugar