Tobacco Alkaloids, Sterols And Non-volatile Acids By Gas Chromatography / Mass Spectrometry Analysis

Tobacco is an economic crop for its leaves and needed for its taste sensation. The quality of tobacco products is determined by a multitudinous variety of substances in tobacco leaves, which are extremely complex mixtures. Compositions of different tobaccos are not the same .In the thesis, gas chromatographic methods for analysis of alkaloids, sterols and nonvolatile acids in tobacco, were developed. Alkaloids and sterols were analyzed by extraction-gas chromatography while nonvolatile organic acids by derivation-gas chromatography. Three kinds of compounds in tobacco mentioned above were qualitatively analyzed by RT(retention time), RRT(relative retention time) and GC/MS and quantitatively analyzed by IS(internal standard). The simple pretreatments provided good RSDs(alkaloids: 2.2~15.0%; sterols: 2.6~8.8%; nonvolatile organic acids: 0.6~19.8%) and high recoveries(alkaloids: 89.4~98.8%; sterols:92.7~102.1%; nonvolatile organic acids: 86.7~103.6%).Based upon the reseach above, we relatively determined the quantity of alkaloids, sterols and nonvolatile organic acids in 52 different kinds of tobacco leaves collected by Changde Cigarette Factory and compared their mutual proportions. The relative contents of alkaloids, sterols and nonvolatile organic acids are 0.92—3.03%, 0.02—0.06%, 2.31 — 4.55%. Results of this thesis provided data for intelligentized cigarette design and helped to ruduce tar and speed the development of cigarette industry.