Comparison of Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction with Static Extraction as Pre-Processing Method Before Gas Chromatography Analysis of Cereal Lipids

A pre-processing method for the extraction of fatty acids from cereal grains is described. Ultrasound (sonication)-assisted extraction was compared to a static extraction method as the pre-processing method before gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GCMS) analysis of barley, sorghum and corn grain samples. Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to identify patterns in the chromatographic data and classify the samples based on the extraction treatment (sonication vs static). The results of the PCA clearly distinguish between the sonication and static samples. It was observed that the ultrasound-assisted extraction impacted the chromatographs of the grain samples, a factor which simplifies the interpretation of the data. In addition, the results showed the ability of using multivariate technique such as PCA to improve data interpretation.