Application of Aroma Component GC/MS Fingerprint in Identifying Producing Areas of Flue-cured Tobacco

In order to explore the potential of identifying flue-cured tobacco producing areas and controlling leaf quality by using GC/MS fingerprint, SDE combined with GC/MS was used to construct three standard fingerprints on aroma component of flue-cured tobacco from three areas (Hunan, Guangxi and Guizhou). Random samples from the 3 areas were used to tested and samples from Guangdong and Henan were used to verify the standard fingerprints. The results showed that there was high similarity among samples in the same producing area for the 3 areas, while low similarity was exist among samples from different areas. The sample similarity from Guangdong, Henan with the other 3 areas were lower than the threshold value of the standard fingerprint. It suggested that the system could discriminate effectively producing areas of flue-cured tobacco. Hierarchical cluster analysis was also carried out to analyze the aroma component of the flue-cured tobacco. The results showed that it was basically the same as the fingerprint identification results, which further proved the feasibility of identification of the producing areas and the characteristic of flue-cured tobacco based on GC/MS fingerprint and combined hierarchical cluster analysis.