The genuine Chinese medicinal (GCM), also known as Dao-di Herbs, is a synonym for high quality Chinese medicinal materials, which has been established in thousands of years of clinical practice and is a comprehensive standard for evaluating the quality of Chinese medicinal materials. The newest data from the Fourth National Survey of Chinese Medicinal Resources showed that Sichuan Province has 7290 types of Chinese medicine and 86 GCM, both ranking highly in China. The characteristics like diverse species, wide distribution, higher yield, and good quality are considered as advantages of geo-herbals grown in Sichuan. Resources guarantee and high-quality development of those medicine materials make a difference in local Chinese medicine quality promotion and Chinese medicine industry and technology development to serve the public's needs, assist targeted poverty alleviation, and strengthen ecological protection. This review aims to outline significant progress in the recent ten years regarding regionalization, germplasm resources, and quality evaluation around the quality assurance of GCM in Sichuan, China.

In this research, a very practical QuEChERS-GC-MS/MS analytical approach for 74 pesticide residues in herb based on retention index was established. This novel analytical approach has two important technical advantages. One advantage is to quickly screen pesticide compounds in herbs without having to use a large number of pesticide standard substances at the beginning of the experiment. The other advantage is to assist in identifying the target pesticide compound accurately. A total of 74 kinds of pesticides were quickly prescreened in all chuanxiong rhizoma samples. The results showed that three kinds of pesticides were screened out in all the samples, including chlorpyrifos, fipronil, and procymidone, and the three pesticides were qualitatively and quantitatively determined. The RSD values for interday and intraday variation were acquired to evaluate the precision of the analytical approach, and the overall interday and intraday variations are not more than 1.97 and 3.82, respectively. The variations of concentrations of the analyzed three pesticide compounds in sample CX16 are 0.744.15, indicating that the three pesticides in the sample solutions were stable in 48h. The spiked recoveries of the three pesticides are 95.22, 93.03, and 94.31, and the RSDs are less than ±6.0. The methodological verification results indicated the good reliability and accuracy of the new analytical method. This research work is a new application of retention index, and it will be a valuable tool to assist quickly and accurately in the qualitative and quantitative analysis of multipesticide residues in herbs.