Characterization of fatty acids composition in vegetable oils by gas chromatography and chemometrics

Principal component analysis and discriminant analysis were applied to gas chromatographic data for fatty acids composition of commercial edible vegetable oils including sesame, perilla, soybean, corn germ, canola, rapeseed, olive and coconut oils. Principal components plot showed that eight different vegetable oils are clustered in distinct groups; each group could be distinguished clearly. Discriminant analysis was employed to assign unknown samples into one of two groups. Principal component analysis or discriminant analysis is very useful for many aspects of vegetable oils industry, including pattern recognition or primary evaluation of category similarity, detection of adulterants, and quality control.