Identification of camellia oil based on fatty acids gas-chromatographic fingerprints combined with chemometrics.

Camellia oil is a high-quality edible vegetable oil with a variety of physiologic functions. To accurately identify the camellia oil, the qualitative and quantitative determination of fatty acids in camellia oil was conducted by gas chromatography. The fatty acids in camellia oil were oleic acid, linoleic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid and linolenic acid. Among them, the proportion of monounsaturated fatty acid oleic acid was 77.56–82.60%. Based on the gas-chromatography, effective fingerprints were established for 13 camellia-oil samples grown in Zhejiang Province of China. The results of similarity analysis showed that camellia oil grown in this area had a high similarity, the similarity was as high as 0.998. Combining fingerprint analysis with chemometrics, the classification of camellia oil samples based on the difference of fatty acid content could be achieved using the shortest distance method in hierarchical cluster analysis. The key fatty acids, oleic and linolenic acid, were identified through principal component analysis. Indeed, camellia oil from various production areas within a 200-km radius in Zhejiang Province, China, could be distinguished based on the two main fatty acids. The quality of the 13 types of camellia-oil samples was assessed and categorized through scoring, ranging from − 1.69 to 3.72. In this study, gas chromatography fingerprinting technique was combined with chemometrics which allowed to identify camellia oil samples quality and distinguish the samples according to their geographic origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]