SHORT COMMUNICATION VARIATIONS IN ESSENTIAL OILS OF MANDARINE RELATED TO PROCESSING AND RIPENING

Mandarine essential oils are extracted from green unripened fruits as well as from red fruits at ripening,both oils having specific uses as natural additives in the food industry.Two processes of production,pressing and peeling,are currently adopted in their production.Capillary gas chromatography with flameionization detection has been suggested as a sensitive method for the fractionation of volatile componentsof the essential oils.Principal component analysis was proposed as an exploratory chemometric methodfor the differentiation of essential oils from fruits at different degrees of ripening,taking into accountthe processes of production.Product-moment correlations between variables(concentrations of 17components)were used as starting matrices and the explained variance was adopted as a criterion foreigenvalue selection.Bi-plots and three-dimensional plots of unrotated principal component scores weresystematically used as well as those of orthogonally rotated factor scores.The 17 variables were reducedto four principal components,which explained 87% of the total variance.Projection on the first threeeigenvectors of all data as unrotated component scores allowed for a tentative differentiation of 59 oilsaccording to their degree of ripening.The two processes of production were also differentiated in asample of 55 oils.

SHORT COMMUNICATION VARIATIONS IN ESSENTIAL OILS OF MANDARINE RELATED TO PROCESSING AND RIPENING

Mandarine essential oils are extracted from green unripened fruits as well as from red fruits at ripening, both oils having specific uses as natural additives in the food industry.Two processes of production, pressing and peeling,are currently adopted in their production.Capillary gas chromatography with flame ionization detection has been suggested as a sensitive method for the fractionation of volatile components of the essential oils.Principal component analysis was proposed as an exploratory chemometric method for the differentiation of essential oils from fruits at different degrees of ripening,taking into account the processes of production.Product-moment correlations between variables(concentrations of 17 components)were used as starting matrices and the explained variance was adopted as a criterion for eigenvalue selection.Bi-plots and three-dimensional plots of unrotated principal component scores were systematically used as well as those of orthogonally rotated factor scores.The 17 variables were reduced to four principal components,which explained 87% of the total variance.Projection on the first three eigenvectors of all data as unrotated component scores allowed for a tentative differentiation of 59 oils according to their degree of ripening.The two processes of production were also differentiated in a sample of 55 oils.