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Acquisition of Volatile Compounds by Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS)

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Plant Metabolomics

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 1778))

Abstract

Plants synthesize and emit a large range of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that play important roles in their interactions with the environment, from attracting pollinators and seed dispersers to protectants such as repellants and pathogen inhibitors. As such, the development of techniques for headspace collection of volatiles in combination with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) has an important impact on our understanding of the biosynthesis of plant VOCs. Furthermore, knowledge of the plant VOCs can be valuable in relation to plant breeding for improving fruit flavor or enhancing resistance to insects or pathogens. This chapter describes a reliable method for extracting volatile compounds by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME), and separate and detect them by GC-MS.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad-FEDER, University of Málaga through the Grants AGL2012-40066-CO2-02 and Ramón y Cajal program (RYC-09170). The authors also thank the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement number 679303) and the Max Planck Society for financial support.

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Correspondence to Sonia Osorio .

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Vallarino, J.G., Erban, A., Fehrle, I., Fernie, A.R., Kopka, J., Osorio, S. (2018). Acquisition of Volatile Compounds by Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). In: António, C. (eds) Plant Metabolomics. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1778. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7819-9_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7819-9_16

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  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-7818-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-7819-9

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