Analysis of Iranian rosemary essential oil: application of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry combined with chemometrics.

This paper focuses on characterization of the components of Iranian rosemary essential oil using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Multivariate curve resolution (MCR) approach was used to overcome the problem of background, baseline offset and overlapping/embedded peaks in GC-MS. The analysis of GC-MS data revealed that sixty eight components exist in the rosemary essential oil. However, with the help of MCR this number was extended to ninety nine components with concentrations higher than 0.01%, which accounts for 98.23% of the total relative content of the rosemary essential oil. The most important constituents of the Iranian rosemary are 1,8-cineole (23.47%), α-pinene (21.74%), berbonone (7.57%), camphor (7.21%) and eucalyptol (4.49%).