Analysis of Flower Cuticular Waxes and Cutin Monomers

Here we describe procedures for the flower cuticular waxes extraction, modification and subsequent qualitative and quantitative analysis by gas-chromotography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and gas-chromotography with flame ionization detector (GC-FID), accordingly. To characterize flower cutin monomers two experimental setup are described: (i) analysis of enzymatically isolated cuticles in order to determine the relative proportions of cutin monomers; (ii) analysis of freeze-dried material for quantitative estimation of the cutin content. This report is an adaptation of the earlier published protocols developed for the chemical analysis of the cuticles in vegetative organs (Leide et al., 2007).