Development of a Chromatographic Fingerprint of Tobacco Flavor by Use of GC and GC-MS

A new chromatographic fingerprinting method has been established for quality control of tobacco flavor. Three different extraction techniques, simultaneous distillation extraction (SDE), liquid-liquid extraction, and solid-phase microextraction were evaluated for isolation of the components of interest. After comparison of their performance, a combination of SDE and GC-MS was used for simple, reliable, and reproducible development of a chromatographic fingerprint of tobacco flavor. Twelve samples of the flavor from different batches were used to establish the fingerprint. Thirty-nine volatile components of the tobacco flavor samples, accounting for 86.54% of the total content, were identified and quantified. The 12 samples had 28 peaks in common. The method of fingerprint analysis was then validated on the basis of the relative retention times and relative peak areas of the common peaks, sample stability, and similarity analysis. The similarities of the 12 samples of tobacco flavor were > 0.80, showing that samples from different batches were, to some extent, consistent. The chromatographic fingerprint developed was successfully used to differentiate tobacco flavor samples from tobacco extract prepared from tobacco leaf, both by similarity comparison and by principal-components projection analysis. The method can be used for quality control of tobacco flavor.