Differentiation of vegetable oils by mass spectrometry combined with statistical analysis

The main triacylglycerol (TAG) composition of different plant oils (almond, avocado, corn germ, grape seed, linseed, mustard seed, olive, peanut, pumpkin seed, sesame seed, soybean, sunflower, walnut and wheat germ) were analyzed using two different mass spectrometric techniques: HPLC/APCI-MS (high-performance liquid chromatography/atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry) and MALDI-TOFMS (matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry). Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) as a multivariate mathematical statistical method was successfully used to distinguish different plant oils based on their relative TAG composition. With LDA analysis of either APCI-MS or MALDI-MS data, the classification among the almond, avocado, grape seed, linseed, mustard seed, olive, sesame seed and soybean oil samples was 100% correct. In both cases only 6 different oil samples from a total of 73 were not classified correctly. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.