CHEMOMETRIC ANALYSIS AND EXTRACTION PROCESSES OF MANDARINE ESSENTIAL OILS

The comparison of Italian mandarin essential oils obtained by means of two different extraction procedures is considered here. Capillary gas chromatography with flame ionization detection was applied to the sep aration of essential oils sampled in the period October 1982-January 1 983. The raw data matrix consisted in total of N = 55 observations, re presenting samples obtained by pressing (n(1) = 42) and peeling (n(2) = 13), on p = 17 baseline separated volatile components. In a explorat ively approach the data have been first examined by principal factor a nalysis (PFA); successively, two methods of linear discriminant analys is (LDA) have been applied, discussed and compared. While PFA could no t permit an unequivocal discrimination between mandarin essential oils extracted by different technologies, both discriminant methods have g iven a complete separation.