［Objective］ To establish a fast and nondestructive analysis method for identifying iron rod yam.［Methods］ Atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry (APCI -MS) was employed to detect the chemical constituents of iron rod yam (TG) and non -iron rod yam (FTG ) from different origins under ambient temperature and pressure,With 200 sets of data collected from each type of TG and FTG,and a total of 3 600 mass spectrometry data points were obtained.Subsequently,the initial level of the mass spectrometry data obtained was analyzed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA ) and the random forest (RF) algorithm.Pattern recognition analysis established a model to differentiate between TG and FTG based on their chemical compositions.［Results］］ The difference between the first -level mass spectra obtained by HS -APCI -MS was obvious between TG samples and FTG samples.The cumulative variance contribution plot of the principal components showed that the first seven principal components accounted for 85.63% (≥85%) of the variance.The accuracy of the training set and detection set reached 100% when the number of decision trees was 25.HS-APCI -MS combined with RF algorithm had a significant identification effect on TG,and the classification effect of RF was superior to that of PCA.［Conclusion］ Atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry,combined with the RF algorithm,can rapidly and non -destructively identify TG and FTG,providing a new technical method for authenticating TG.