应用高效液相色谱法初步建立了南路边茶的指纹图谱。采用线性梯度洗脱，乙腈和0.3%甲酸水溶液为流动相，柱温为30 ℃，检测波长为280 nm，流速为1.0 mL/min。根据平均相对保留时间、共有峰、平均相对峰面积等对色谱指纹图谱进行了分析。方法的精密度、重复性和稳定性良好。通过对48批不同生产企业、不同生产年限的南路边茶样品进行分析，以咖啡碱为参照峰，共确定了37个色谱峰作为南路边茶的特征指纹峰。运用相似度评价和聚类分析法对各批次南路边茶样品指纹图谱进行了化学模式识别研究。各批次南路边茶样品与对照指纹图谱共有模式的相似度均大于0.90；对相对峰面积的聚类分析结果表明，当临界值为15时，48批南路边茶样品可聚为2类。该研究为南路边茶的鉴别和质量控制提供了参考。

The chromatographic fingerprint of southern route tea was established by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). A suitable chromatographic system was established using a linear gradient elution with acetonitrile and water containing 0.3% formic acid as the mobile phase with a detection wavelength of 280 nm and the flow speed of 1.0 mL/min. According to the average relative retention time, common peaks, and average relative peak area in HPLC were assayed respectively. The HPLC fingerprint was established with good stability, precision and reproducibility. The chromatographic fingerprint was analyzed based on the analysis of HPLC chromatogram of 48 batches of southern route tea samples. It was confirmed that 37 peaks in chromatograms can be selected as characrerixation peaks while the caffeine peak was chosen as the referential peak. The HPLC fingerprints were analyzed by similarity evaluation and cluster analysis to conduct the chemical pattern recognition. The similarity of 48 batches of southern route tea was more than 0.90. Results from a cluster analysis of the relative peak area showed that the 48 batches of southern route tea samples could be divided into about two types.