Artemisia umbelliformis Lam. and génépi liqueur. From the field to the final product: the importance of the volatile fraction in quality control

Volatile fraction plays a fundamental role for quali- and quantitative characterization of aromatic plants and their relative products, i.e. alcoholic beverages. A. umbelliformis, commonly known as "white génépi", is traditionally used to prepare a precious liqueur, and it is characterized by a volatile fraction rich in two monoterpenoids, i.e. - and β- thujone. The maximum content of thujones in Artemisia-based beverages is limited to 35 mg/L in the EU1 because of their recognized activity on human central nervous system. This study reports the results of an investigation to define the geographical origin and thujone content of individual plants of A. umbelliformis from different geographical sites, cultivated experimentally at a single site, and to predict the thujones content in the resulting liqueurs, through their volatile fraction. Headspace Solid Phase Microextraction (HS-SPME) coupled with Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) or directly with mass spectrometry (HS-SPME-MS) were used in combination with chemometric descriptive and predictive tools. HS-SPME-MS was applied to speed-up the total analysis time and to make the adopted method suitable for the screening of a large number of samples. With both approaches, a diagnostic prediction of: i) plant geographical origin, and ii) thujones content of plant-related liqueurs could be achieved.