Chemometric analyses of curie-point pyrolysis—mass spectral data for differentiating seeds of triticeae grass species and hybrids

Abstract

Valcarce, R.V., Smith, G.G., Stevenson, D.N. and Asay, K.H., 1990. Chemometric analyses of Curie point pyrolysis—mass spectral data for differentiating seeds of Triticeae grass species and hybrids. Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems, 9: 95–105. Hybrid combinations of quackgrass ( Elytrigia repens) with bluebunch wheatgrass ( Pseudoroegneria spicata) offer substantial economic benefits for western rangelands of the United States if a reliable chemotaxonomic technique can be developed to distinguish hybrid seed from regular quackgrass seed. Curie-point pyrolysis—mass spectrometry (Py-MS) coupled with chemometric analysis is shown to be a potential solution for this problem. Using Py-MS with unsupervised pattern recognition techniques (hierarchical cluster analysis and principal component analysis), the chemical differences that discriminate quackgrass seed from hybrid seed as well as bluebunch wheatgrass seed are clearly elucidated. In addition, discriminant analysis was used to determine the discriminant functions suitable for classifying subsequent unknown grass seed samples.