Analysis of volatile flavour components in flue-cured tobacco by headspace solid-phase microextraction combined with GC×GC-TOFMS

Abstract

A method suitable for qualitative and quantitative analysis was developed and validated for volatile flavour components in flue-cured tobacco. The samples were prepared with headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and analyzed by comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography-time of flight mass spectrometry (GC×GC-TOFMS). Important experimental parameters, such as the column combinations, the type of SPME fibres and headspace temperatures, were optimized to improve separation and precision. The results showed that divinylbenzene/carboxen/polydimethylsiloxane (DVB/CAR/PDMS) fibre at a headspace temperature of 70 °C, along with DB-1MS and DB-wax columns were the best conditions. The 93 compounds of interest were identified and quantified by the match factor and internal standard phenylethyl acetate and the relative standard deviation for most compounds was less than 22.7%. Finally, the developed analytical method was applied to the classification of different flue-cured tobacco samples from different geographical origins and satisfactory results were achieved.