Dad 3000 detector

The extracts were analysed in a HPLC Dionex Ultimate 3000 equipped with a C-18 LiChrospher^® 100 RP-18 (5 μm) column (250 × 4.0 mm) (Sigma-Aldrich, San Luis, MO, USA) operating at 35 °C, coupled to a DAD-3000 detector (Thermo Scientific, Massachusetts, USA). The mobile phase consisted of water-formic acid (0.5% v/v) (eluent A) and acetonitrile (90%) + formic acid (0.5%) + water (eluent B) at a flow rate of 0.3 mL/min with an injection volume of 20 μL. The gradient used is summarized in ‘Supplementary Materials Table S1’ section.

HPLC analysis of maca root extract, Chinese chive seed extract and the combined extracts were performed using an Ultimate 3000 HPLC system, which consisted of an SR-3000 pump, a DAD-3000 detector and a WPS-3000 autosampler (Thermo Fisher Scientific, China). The experiment was conducted using a Kromasil 100-5C18 column (250 × 4.6 mm, 5 μm); the flow rate was set to 1.0 ml min^− 1 of acetonitrile (solvent A) and water (0.1% phosphoric acid) (solvent B) with gradient elution (0–26 min: 85% A-15% B; 26–40 min: 85% A increasing to 95% A; 40–50 min: 95% A-5% B), and the column temperature set to 40 °C. The detection wavelength was monitored at 210 nm [31 , 32 ].

The samples were prepared using a method described by Oliveira et al. [56 (link)] The crude methanol extract was separated using a C18 Reversed-phase Hypersil GOLD aQ column (100 × 2.1 mm ~1.9 µm) (Thermo, Waltham, MA, USA) at 30 °C on a Dionex Ultimate 3000 UHPLC with a diode-array DAD-3000 detector (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA). The UHPLC-MS/MS analyses were conducted based on a method described by Buzgaia et al. [4 ]. The MS data analyses were conducted using the ThermoXcalibur 2.2 SP1.48 software (Thermo Fisher Inc. Waltham, MA, USA) and based on readily available literature data. The MS data were firstly converted into the mzXML format using the MSConvert software. The generated spectral information was then uploaded to MZmine-2.5.3-Windows to generate the MS/MS data [57 (link),58 (link)].