The nature and fate of natural resins in the geosphere. XII. Investigation of C-ring aromatic diterpenoids in Raritan amber by pyrolysis-GC-matrix isolation FTIR-MS

Upper Cretaceous amber from the Raritan Formation (Sayerville, New Jersey) has been investigated by Pyrolysis-GC-MS and Pyrolysis-GC-matrix isolation FTIR-MS. Results establish the existence of two distinct forms of amber in this deposit. Both forms are Class Ib ambers, but they are unambiguously differentiated on the basis of their (intact) diterpenoid composition. The presence of callitrisate in both forms, and cupraene in samples designated form 1, strongly suggest that both derive from related-but-distinct species within the Cupressaceae. In addition to callitrisate, dehydroabietate and analogous 17-nor-, 16,17-dinor- and 15,16,17-trinor- analogues of these compounds are also observed. The distributions of these products in multiple samples suggest that they are the result of biological emplacement, rather than diagenetic modification of the parent compounds. This indicates that the distributions of diterpenes observed in these samples are representative of the original bioterpenoids and, hence, are useful for chemotaxonomic analyses

Geographical differentiation of saffron by GC-MS/FID and chemometrics

The volatile compounds of saffron of different origins were investigated to check their suitability as markers of geographic differentiation. A total of 247 saffron samples from Greece (40 samples), Iran (84 samples), Italy (60 samples) and Spain (63 samples) which were harvested in 2006 were analysed using ultrasound-assisted extraction, gas chromatography followed by mass spectrometry and flame ionisation. All regions were easily differentiated by canonical discriminant analysis. The percentages of correct classification and validation were 96.4 and 94.3%, respectively. These investigations showed the potential of saffron volatiles to discriminate saffron samples with different geographical origins