Abstract:To analyze the content range of total arsenic and four arsenic forms in Astragali Radix， a content determination method was established based on liquid chromatography-atomic fluorescence spectrometry （LCAFS）. The microwave digestion method was used to digest Astragali Radix samples， and the atomic fluorescence method was employed to determine the total arsenic content in Astragali Radix. The conditions for extracting arsenic compounds from Astragali Radix were optimized by the Box-Behnken design. The detection rate of total arsenic in 30 Astragali Radix samples was 50%， with a content range of ND-0.35 mg/kg. The optimal conditions for extracting arsenic compounds from Astragali Radix were a nitric acid concentration of 0.20 mol/L， an extraction temperature of 62.2 ℃， and extraction time of 35.6 min， under which the extraction rate reached 89.3%， which showed a minor difference from the predicted value. LC-AFS was used to separate four arsenic forms from Astragali Radix samples for determination. The four arsenic forms in the range of 0-100 μg/L were effectively separated within 20.0 min. The correlation coefficients of different forms were above 0.999.