Abstract

Modern gas chromatography, with the development of advanced analytical techniques, has become a fundamental tool for the separation and characterization of plant extracts. These last issues are absolutely important if considering the widespread use of plant derivatives not only in pharmaceutical/food industry but also, for a large part, in traditional and alternative medicine, which require a high level of quality and safety. Hence, the development of new, powerful hyphenated GC techniques were reviewed in this article, including Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), Solid Phase Microextraction-Gas Chromatography (SPME-GC), Gas Chromatography- Fourier-transformed Infrared Spectroscopy (GC-FTIR), Multidimensional Gas Chromatography (MDGC) and Comprehensive Gas Chromatography (GCxGC). Several applications of each technique were reported and illustrated.

Keywords: Hyphenated techniques, Gas Chromatography, Plant extracts, Comprehensive GC, MDGC, SPME, FTIR, Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), Solid Phase Microextraction-Gas Chromatography (SPME-GC), Gas Chromatography-Fourier-transformed Infrared Spectroscopy (GC-FTIR), Multidimensional Gas Chromatography (MDGC), Comprehensive Gas Chromatography (GCxGC), essential oils, fats, bioactive molecules, alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, glycosides, saponins, terpenes, effectiveness, reliability, sensitivity, non-volatile, Time of Flight (TOF), Computer library matching, C10 H16, C15 H24, Wiley/NIST databases, quadrupole, magnetic sector, reproducibility, Narcissus poeticus, hybrid, aristolene, allohedycaryol, capillary gas chromatography, –, flame ionization detection, Headspace solid-phase microextraction, GC-FTIR, chemigram, b-cyclodextrin, Mentha species, vegetable matrices, GCXGC, stopped flow modulation, thermo-sensitive compounds, Cryogenic modulators, double-jet, single-jet, quad-jet, group-type identification, monodimensional analysis, Coffea arabica, Coffea robusta, Tropaeolum majus, biological activity, GC hyphenated techniques, CAS, LMCS