Head space plant volatile organic compounds – recent advancement

Each plants represents an amazing storehouse of diverse phytochemicals and among the diversity of phytochemicals, Plant Volatile Organic Compounds (PVOCs) are significant with respect to ecological and economic importance. PVOCs, responsible for the aroma of plants, are typically small molecules with low boiling point and high vapor pressure at ambient temperature. Several techniques such as enfleurage, solvent extraction, expression and super critical fluid extraction are applied for PVOCs extraction, of which the essential oils isolated through hydrodistillation is the most widely adopted technology. Head space PVOCs are the unconjugated PVOCs from flowers, fruits and other vegetative tissues that cross the cell membranes naturally and disperse in the air at ambient temperature. Terpenoids, phenolics and fatty acid derivatives are the major constituents of HS-PVOCs. Gas Liquid Chromatography (GLC) coupled with Mass Spectrometry (MS) is the best single tool for PVOCs analysis. The scent of flowers and the aroma of fruits are due to the HS-PVOCs. The HS-PVOCs are responsible for a variety of biological and pharmacological activities of plants, and are widely utilized in various industrial sectors such as perfumery, cosmetics, medicines, preservatives, nutraceuticals, flavours and food additives. HS-PVOCs are also investigated intensively with respect to chemical ecology, atmospheric chemistry, integrated pest management, defence against herbivores, detection of disease infestation, biological control mechanisms, food quality, chemotaxonomy, chemogenomics and metabolomics. Recent developments in HS-PVOCs include a shift from the static headspace GC-MS analysis toward faster, more sensitive, and portable real-time emission kinetics and nanomaterial sensor-based AI platforms. The advancements in HS-PVOCs analyses have opened exciting opportunities in HS-PVOCs sector.