Novel trends and applications of multidimensional chromatography in the analysis of food, cosmetics and medicine bearing essential oils.

Overview

The analysis of aroma composition in scented plants and natural products to probe their quality and safety is an important topic, particularly when such ingredients are intended for long term use as in food or cosmetic products. The development of fast, comprehensive, and effective analytical tools for essential oil analysis in such complex mixtures is of interest and moreover when present in blend of several oils, as typical in case of nutraceuticals or cosmetics. Comprehensive studies of volatiles could be achieved via coupling the separation power of multidimensional chromatography with selective detectors as mass spectrometers. This strategy enables high-throughput and global analysis of hundreds of metabolites in a single step. Different multidimensional setups such as GC × GC and LC-GC in addition to various chemometric approaches applied for essential oils analysis form a fundamental part of this review. Asides, applications of multidimensional chromatography for essential oils chemotyping, enantio-separation, quality control and adulteration detection in the different matrices are also presented.