Simple and rapid FTIR spectral data and chemometric analysis based method for evaluation of the quality of Indian Sandalwood oil

Abstract

ABSTRACT The authentication of Indian Sandalwood oil and the detection of adulterants are issues of increasing importance in the sandalwood oil-based industries such as food, perfumery, cosmetics and aromatherapy industries. In this paper, Fourier-Transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectral data combined with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Partial Least Square Regression (PLSR) were used for the authentication of pure and adulterated sandalwood oil. The pure Indian sandalwood oil was extracted by three different methods (i.e. solvent extraction, hydro-distillation and steam distillation) and blended with various proportion of diethyl phthalate (DEP) and diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) separately. The pure and adulterated oil samples were evaluated using FTIR-ATR (attenuated total reflection) spectroscopic technique. The results lead to the conclusion that FT-IR spectroscopy with chemometric techniques could be successfully used as a simple, rapid and non-destructive method for the quality assessment of the high-valued Indian Sandalwood oil.