Planta Med 2011; 77 - SL38
DOI: 10.1055/s-0031-1282161

Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry combined with mathematical chromatography as a powerful tool in the analysis of citrus fruits essential oils

H Parastar 1, M Jalali Heravi 2, H Sereshti 3
  • 1Department of Chemistry, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran; Iran National Elite Foundation, Tehran, Iran
  • 2Department of Chemistry, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
  • 3Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Citrus fruits essential oils are valuable natural products that are more popular nowadays in the world due to their effects on health conditions and their role in preventing and curing diseases [1]. Also, they have a broad range of applications in foods, perfumes, cosmetics and human nutrition. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) is the most important technique for the analysis of essential oils [2]. However, there are some fundamental problems in their analysis including baseline drift, spectral background, noise, low S/N, changes in the peak shapes and co-elution (overlapped, embedded peaks) [3]. Mathematical chromatography (MC) as a branch of chemometrics [4] attempts to develop new tools to handle these problems. In this work, first, we have extracted the essential oils of the peels of eighteen citrus fruits such as lemon, lime, mandarin, orange and grapefruit using hydrodistillation and then analyzed with GC-MS. Then, their signals were analyzed by MC. Using this strategy, the numbers of identified components were extended and quality of the results was improved significantly. As a positive consequence of using the proposed strategy human time and work are saved. Also, some new components were identified for the first time. In addition, we used our recently developed software, called MCRC Software for performing these techniques [5]. After resolving the volatile components in different samples, principal component analysis (PCA) was used for monitoring the pattern of volatile components in different samples. It is concluded that GC-MS+MC+PCA can open a new window to the comprehensive analysis of essential oils.

Keywords: Chemometrics, Mathematical chromatography, Essential oil, Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, Citrus fruits

Acknowledgement: Parastar H. would like to acknowledge the Iran National Elite Foundation for their support.

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[5] Jalali-Heravi M, Parastar H, Kamalzadeh M, Tauler R, Jaumot J (2010) Chemom Intell Lab Syst 104: 155–171.