A method for the classification of vegetable oils according to
their botanical origin using n-alkane profiles established by
GC–MS has been developed.
n-alkanes were extracted from oil samples by saponification with ethanolic potassium
hydroxide and separated by column chromatography
Using
GC–MS data, an LDA model with an excellent prediction capability
was obtained by using ratios of the areas of the peaks taken by
pairs as predictors. All the objects of the evaluation set were
correctly assigned. Thus, the prediction capability was 100%.