Medicinal plants
are rich sources of natural oils such as essential
and fixed oils used traditionally for nutritive as well as medicinal
purposes. Most of the traditional formulations or phytopharmaceutical
formulations contain oil as the main ingredient due to their own therapeutic
applications and thus mitigating several pathogeneses such as fungal/bacterial/viral
infection, gout, psoriasis, analgesic, antioxidant, skin infection,
etc. Due to the lack of quality standards and progressive adulteration
in the natural oils, their therapeutic efficacy is continuously deteriorated.
To develop quality standards and validate scientific aspects on essential
oils, several chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques such as
HPTLC, HPLC, NMR, LC–MS, and GC–MS have been termed
as the choices of techniques for better exploration of metabolites,
hence sustaining the authenticity of the essential oils. In this review,
chemical profiling and quality control aspects of essential or fixed
oils have been explored from previously reported literature in reputed
journals. Methods of chemical profiling, possible identified metabolites
in essential oils, and their therapeutic applications have been described.
The outcome of the review reveals that GC–MS/MS, LC-MS/MS,
and NMR-based chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques are the
most liable, economic, precise, and accurate techniques for determining
the spuriousness or adulteration of oils based on their qualitative
and quantitative chemical profiling studies. This review occupies
the extensive information about the quality standards of several oils
obtained from natural sources for their regulatory aspects via providing
the detailed methods used in chemoprofiling techniques. Hence, this
review helps researchers in further therapeutic exploration as well
as quality-based standardization for their regulatory purpose.