Comparison of GC Profiles of Achillea crithmifolia and Origanum heracleoticum Essential Oils and Headspace Volatiles

Abstract

In the analysis of the secondary metabolites of plants it would be preferable if the applied method is fast and  the  generation  of  artifacts  is  minimal. Obtaining  essential  oils  (EO)  by hydrodistillation  or  steam distillation is time-consuming (the duration of the distillation is usually two to three hours) and possibility of the formation of artifacts is more probable due relatively high temperature in aqueous solution. Also, the most volatile components could be lost during distillation, essential oil extraction and storage. Traditional head space (HS) method enables the analysis of volatile compounds obtained after the establishment of vapor-liquid equilibrium within a closed container.  Time of analysis is much shorter (10-

20 minutes) than for hydrodistillation, one can work at lower temperatures with or without solvent, and without loss of highly volatile components. Further, an advantage of HS technique is in the fact that it requires less of the plant material (masses lower than one gram in head space in comparison to usually more than 100 g for obtaining essential oil). Although head space GC is widely used (Buchbauer et al. 1993, Vuorela  et al. 1989, Rouseff & Cadwallader, 2001, Zhu et al.  2005, Serban et al.  2012) limited number of articles is focused on analysis of the head space volatile components obtained directly from the plant material under static conditions (Abu-Lafi et al. 2007, Simonovi? et al. 2014). Continuing a previous examination  (Simonovi?  et  al.  2014)  we  considered  that  it  is  of  interest  to  compare  EO  and  HSV composition for more samples in order to determine their compatibility. For this purpose, the analysis of essential oils and head space volatiles of Achillea crithmifolia Waldst. & Kit.   and  Origanum heracleoticum L. were done.