Study on the chemical components of volatile oil of Maca from different areas in Yunnan by GC- MS and multivariate statistical analysis

To research the chemical components of volatile oil of maca( Lepidium meyenii) in Yunnan province,the experiment extracted the volatile oil of maca from 8 habitats in Yunnan by simultaneous distillation- solvent extraction( SDE),and then isolated,analyzed and identified it by gas chromatography- mass spectrometry( GC-MS). Furthermore,multivariate statistical analysis methods including similarity analysis,hierarchical cluster analysis( HCA) and principal component analysis( PCA) were applied to the components data.As a result,a total of59 components were identified and 39 of them were common to all the tested samples.These common components account for more than 99% of all volatile oil in every tested sample.There were some common components showed relatively higher quantity:( isothiocyanatomethyl)- Benzene,Benzyl nitrile,4- Methoxybenzyl,( 3- Methoxyphenyl)acetonitrile,Hexadecanoic acid,9,12,15- Octadecatrienoic acid,Benzaldehyde,9,12- Octadecadienoic acid,ethyl9,12,15- octadecatrienoate,Linoleic acid ethyl ester. The results showed that the samples from 8 habitats were distinguished into two classes because of the differences about their components content of volatile oil though their components of volatile oil were similar.