Headspace solid-phase microextraction—comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography of wound induced plant volatile organic compound emissions

Abstract

Plant emissions of volatile organic compounds from mechanically wounded Agrostis stolonifera, Pennisetum clandestinum, Eucalyptus leucoxylon and Trifolium repens have been sampled by headspace-solid phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and analysed by using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC) for measurement of the plant emissions. GC×GC produces a fingerprint of the volatile organic compounds in a 2D separation space that may be approximately interpreted as a boiling point–polarity space, and may then be presented as a two-dimensional contour plot. This allows identification of sample-dependent variations in component distributions in the 2D plot, which will contain information about plant differences and should therefore facilitate recognition of different plant materials and displays the gross differences in volatiles between each plant species.