Abstract
Air-, oven- and freeze-dried garlic bulbs were hydrodistilled and the resulting essential oils were analyzed by gas chromatography (GC) and GC/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The highest yields were 0.6 and 0.5% (w/w) for freeze- and oven-dried samples, respectively. The essential oils were characterized by a high amount of sulfur compounds (84.3–98.9%) with diallyl trisulfide (37.3–45.9%), diallyl disulfide (17.5–35.6%) and methyl allyl trisulfide (7.7–10.4%) being the major components. Remarkable qualitative and quantitative differences between the investigated oils owing to the drying procedure were found and a set of marker components was established to differentiate between them.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Direction Générale de la Recherche Scientifique (Tunisia) and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France), project 11/R 09-11.