Comparative analyses of the volatile components of Citrus aurantium L. using UA-HS-SPME and Hydrodistillation

The volatile components of Citrus aurantium L. flowers were characterized by GC-MS with two different extraction techniques of hydrodistillation (HD) and ultrasonic-assisted headspace solid phase microextraction (UA-HS-SPME). In the SPME method, the samples were irradiated by ultrasonic radiation and their volatile components were collected on a polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS) commercial fiber as well as some manually prepared nanoporous fibers from the samples headspace. The fibers were directly injected into a GC-MS injection port for analysis. The extraction conditions were carefully optimized for the PDMS fiber, due to its better results. Under the optimized conditions (i.e. sonication time 11min, extraction time 03 min and extraction temperature 11ºC),15 compounds were identified by the UA-HS-SPME-GC/MS method. The essential oil components of Citrus aurantium L. flower samples from two different regions of Iran and the samples from a fresh and a old sample from the same region were compared to one another. The major components identified for the samples with both the SPME and HD methods were linalool, linalyl acetate, limonene, β-myrcene, geranyl acetate and neryl acetate, respectively. However, a substantial variation in the percentages of the components was identified for different samples and different extraction methods.

Keywords:

Ultrasonic-assisted headspace SPME (UA-HS-SPME) , PDMS , Citrus aurantium L