Determination of volatile organic compounds generated from fresh, white and red Panax ginseng (C. A. Meyer) using a direct sample injection technique.

Ginsenosides are regarded as the main active, non-volatile components of Panax ginseng (C. A. Meyer). However, throughout the long history of ginseng research, there has been virtually no report describing its volatile flavor compounds. A solvent-free procedure for the determination of volatile flavor compounds generated from fresh, white and red Panax ginseng (C. A. Meyer) using solvent-free solid injection (SFSI) coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) detection is described here. At no point in the SFSI technique were the extraction conditions optimized. Rather, the experimental variables including various sample preparations (fresh, oven-dried and freeze-dried), injector temperatures (100, 150, 200, 250 and 300 degrees C), and preheating times (3, 5, 7, 10 and 15 min), were predicated on the experience of the authors. A total of 47 compounds were identified in various forms of ginseng. Among the compounds identified in the sample, fresh ginseng was characterized by a high proportion of 3-acetyl-1-(3,4-dimethoxyphenyl)-5-ethyl-4,5-dihydro-7,8-dimethoxy-4-methylene-3H-2,3-benzodiazepine (64.24%) and 23,24-dinor-3-oxolean-4,12-dien-28-oic acid (21.42%); 2-furanmethanol (20.26%) and 3-hydroxy-2-methyl-4H-pyran-4-one (17.95%) were detected as the major components in white ginseng while the main components of the red ginseng were found to be 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid dibutyl ester (16.27%) and 2-furanmethanol (13.82%). SFSI is a solvent-free, rapid and simple sample preparation technique based on direct vaporization. There is no dilution or contamination with solvent or its impurities and no loss of quickly eluted components was observed in the solvent peak.