Thermally assisted in-line methylation and gas chromatography with statistical data analysis for determination of fatty acid distribution and fingerprinting of plant seeds and oils

A fast gas chromatographic micro method has been developed which combines i n-line thermally assisted (265 degrees C) methylation of triglyceride fatty acids from plant seeds and oils with multivariate data analysis or Non Par ametric Maximum Likelihood Estimation (NPMLE) on primary detector signals a s the data matrix. Using eight hazelnuts fatty acids from the same tree, th ese were successfully sub-grouped according to harvest year using standard PCA and PLS procedures. When analysing untreated seed and oil samples from rape, soybean, and sunflower, fatty acid distributions were found in genera l agreement with literature values. Although replicate chromatograms were r ather variable. NPMLE allowed unambiguous identification of test samples am ong a given set of possibilities. The potential use of this combination of rapid micro in-line thermally assisted chemolysis GC and computer based dat a treatment for elucidation of other food quality parameters is demonstrate d.