Comparative GC-MS Profiling of Chemical Constituents in Fresh and Dried Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) at Different Drying Temperatures

Author

Salihu Nura. ,Tanko Hashimu Imam, Abdulhakim Zubairu.


Abstract

 Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is highly perishable, and drying can modify its detectable chemical profile through moisture removal, matrix disruption, changes in extractability, and heat-associated reactions. This study compared the GC-MS profiles of fresh tomato with samples dried at 40, 50, and 60 °C. Ethanolic extracts were examined with a Shimadzu GCMS-QP2010 Plus instrument, and detected signals were assigned tentatively through comparison with a mass-spectral library. Relative peak-area normalization was applied to describe the contribution of individual signals within each chromatogram. The original instrument records contained 13 peaks for fresh tomato, 20 at 40 °C, 25 at 50 °C, and 26 at 60 °C. After repeated library names were consolidated, 59 different tentative compound labels were represented across the four profiles. Five labels ferulic acid, n-hexadecanoic acid, naringenin, “Quertine,” and lycopene showed non-zero values in every condition. In the fresh sample, the largest relative signals were assigned to ferulic acid (27.06%), n-hexadecanoic acid (25.73%), oleic acid (21.90%), and octadecanoic acid (6.98%). At 40 °C, Z-11-hexadecenoic acid accounted for 59.95% of the relative signal, while erucic acid (32.90%) was dominant at 50 °C and ethylene diacrylate (40.37%) was the leading library assignment at 60 °C. The relative signal for lycopene was greatest at 50 °C (9.43%). Shannon diversity values were 1.904, 1.582, 2.426, and 2.210 for fresh, 40, 50, and 60 °C samples, respectively. Jaccard similarity values ranged from 0.147 to 0.278, with the highest overlap between the 40 and 60 °C profiles. Bray-Curtis dissimilarity was greatest for fresh versus 60 °C (0.969), whereas the 40 and 60 °C profiles had the lowest dissimilarity (0.882; similarity 0.118). These observations indicate substantial temperature-associated differences in the detectable GC-MS fingerprints. Because only one profile represented each condition and the compound identities were obtained by library matching, the relative peak areas must not be interpreted as absolute concentrations or definitive evidence of compound formation. The results are therefore best viewed as a descriptive fingerprinting dataset that can guide future work involving replicated measurements, authentic standards, retention-index confirmation, and validated quantitative methods.



Keywords

tomato; Solanum lycopersicum; GC-MS; drying temperature; chemical fingerprint; lycopene; relative peak area; Jaccard similarity; Bray-Curtis dissimilarity.



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