Recent advances in untargeted and targeted approaches applied in herbal-extracts and essential-oils fingerprinting - A review

[Display omitted] •Overview of the most useful fingerprinting techniques (chromatographic and spectroscopic).•Taxonomic identification, geographical discrimination and quality assessment of herbal extracts and essential oils.•Screening a wide range of untargeted and targeted fingerprinting approaches.•Proper application of fingerprinting techniques on herbal extracts and essential oils has been discussed.•Chemometric tools applied to the fingerprinting techniques are reviewed. Herbal extracts and essential oils have been used over the centuries for their dietary, cosmetic and therapeutic properties. Quality control is needed to guarantee the safety and quality of these consumables. In this regard, fingerprinting techniques are important for inspection of the authenticity and for quality control. Analytical fingerprinting techniques provide signals related to the composition of a matrix (oil, plant extract, food…). The resulting fingerprint (spectrum or chromatogram) obtained for an untargeted or targeted approach is coupled to chemometric data processing, which may allow, for instance, the desired identification or discrimination of the sample considered. In this context, recent advances in untargeted/targeted fingerprinting approaches (especially chromatographic and spectroscopic) were described and their application in the taxonomic identification, classification and authentication of plants (medicinal) and essential oils discussed. An overview of the applications of untargeted/targeted fingerprinting techniques on herbal-extracts and essential-oils analysis, using different chemometric tools, has been included.