ISHS Acta Horticulturae 306: International Symposium on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, XXIII IHC
SENSORIAL VERSUS ANALYTICAL QUALITY OF MARJORAM |
| Author: | Ch. Franz |
| Abstract:
Sweet marjoram (Majorana hortensis Moench.) is a well-known culinary herb originated from the Mediterranean area. It is widely used as a seasoning, especially in the meat industry. Sweet marjoram is mainly cultivated in Egypt, France, Hungary and Germany. Since the quality of commercial dried herb is largely varying (Oberdieck, 1981) we started a breeding program in 1985 to improve the sensorial quality and homogeneity of marjoram. Due to the fact that numerous artifacts are formed during steam distillation of the essential oil (Fischer, 1986), a headspace injector of high temperature was developed for direct solid sampling of fresh and dried leaves into a GC-system. By varying the thermostat temperature and time we optimized the conditions for reproducible results. In addition, a sniffing detector was used parallelly to FID for sensorial analysis of the essential oil compounds. Using this kit it was possible a) to confirm the previous results of Lossner (1968) and Fischer (1986) on the importance of cis-sabinene-hydrate and other compounds for the flavour of marjoram and b) to differentiate analytically marjoram plants with different flavour profiles. | |
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