Field analyses of lavender volatile organic compounds: performance evaluation of a portable gas chromatography–mass spectrometry device

Abstract

Introduction: In situ analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by plants is an important challenge in chemical ecology. The traditional approach usually consists in trapping compounds using dynamic headspace extraction (DHS) in-field, followed by gas chromatography analysis coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS and/or GC-FID) in the laboratory. Objectives: In this study, we evaluated the use of the new portable Torion T-9 GC-MS system for rapid and in situ analysis of VOCs emitted by fine lavender and lavandin species. Material and methods: All field analyses were performed using a person-portable low-thermal mass GC system coupled with a miniature toroidal ion trap mass analyser (ppGC-ITMS): Torion T-9 portable GC-MS. Subsequently, multivariate statistical analyses were performed to determine chemical differences between species. Results: Thirty compounds were separated and detected in all lavender aboveground samples in only 3 min of analysis. Conclusions: The portable GC-MS device enabled a rapid in-field distinction of Lavandula species based on their detected volatile profiles. In this study, we evaluate the use of the new portable TORION T-9 GC-MS system for rapid and in situ analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by fine lavender and lavandin species. Thirty compounds were separated and detected from all lavender aerial part samples in only three minutes of analysis. The ability to quickly characterize the VOCs emitted by plants in the field attests of this portable device's potential compared to long laboratory analyses.

Trends and applications in plant volatile sampling and analysis

“…(a) VOC blends and mechanisms of release from tomato leaves upon fungal infection (from Jansen et al ., 2010). (b) Field analyses of lavender VOCs by a Torion ® T‐9 portable gas chromatography–mass spectrometry device (Perkin Elmer, Waltham, MA, USA) (from Stierlin et al ., 2020). (c,d) E‐nose for plant volatile measurement.…”

“…The development of miniature GC‐based VOC detection systems has been of great interest in the past years. To allow for direct compound identification, more recently developed portable GCs have been coupled with miniature (toroidal) ion trap mass detectors (Barreira et al ., 2015; Beck et al ., 2015; Stierlin et al ., 2020). A fast analysis of compounds at low power consumption is achieved by the efficient heating of columns instead of the entire convection oven (low thermal mass GC).…”

“…Stierlin et al . (2020), for example, evaluated the performance of a portable GC‐MS device, the Torion ® T‐9 system (Perkin Elmer, Waltham, MA, USA), and was able to analyze 30 VOCs of lavender in only 3 min in the field (Figure 3b). A disadvantage of these portable GC‐MS systems is that internal ion trap mass libraries need to be generated from standards to allow proper compound identification in the field.…”

Non-destructive Technologies for Plant Health Diagnosis

“…However, this conventional GC-MS-based analysis method requires complex laboratory equipment with substantial time lags between sampling and analysis, limiting on-field analysis of plant VOCs. Portable GC-MS instruments have been developed to accelerate VOCs analysis (Beck et al, 2015 ; Sharma et al, 2019 ; Stierlin et al, 2020 ), but they often require manual sample injection and suffer from poor compound resolution due to limited column length.…”

Insight into micromorphology and phytochemistry of Lavandula angustifolia Mill. from Italy

“…With regards to phytochemistry, in the last decade literature presented some contributions about the characterization of VOCs spontaneously emitted by samples of different origin (Demasi et al, 2018;Łyczko et al, 2019;Pistelli et al, 2013;Stierlin et al, 2020).…”