Evaluation of the Aroma Characteristics of the Herbs from Minamiaso using an Ultra‐High‐Speed GC System

Here, the effectiveness of the ultra-high performance gas chromatography (GC) Heracles Ⅱ system in aroma analysis was demonstrated. The herbs produced in Minamiaso, including Mentha x piperita L., Cymbopogon citratus, and Lavandula officinalis, and commercially available herbs produced overseas were tested. First, an herb's components were identified by GC-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and its flavor was confirmed by GC-olfactometry (GC-O). An herb's flavor composition was confirmed using the principal component analysis (PCA) of the chromatogram data from the ultra-high-speed GC analysis. The scent characteristics of each sample were shown to differentiate based on the aromatic components. The aromatic components that contributed to the differentiation were confirmed from the loading plot. The more specific characteristics of an aroma were clarified from the area value of the corresponding components. Compared to the herbs produced overseas, all the herbs from Minamiaso had a larger amount of aromatic components, i.e., area values, and a relatively large amount of highly volatile components. As a result, it was inferred that the freshness of Minamiaso was maintained and that the highly volatile components were reduced because the overseas products were commercially available. These results show that the aromatic component analysis using ultra-high-speed GC can help distinguish each herb accurately by their specific characteristics. Also the effectiveness of the ultra-high-speed GC system was confirmed with GC-O and GC-MS.