Monitoring biogenic volatile compounds emitted by Eucalyptus citriodora using SPME

A procedure to monitor BVOC emitted by living plants using SPME technique is presented. For this purpose, a glass sampling chamber was designed. This device was employed for the characterization of biogenic volatile compounds emitted by leaves of Eucalyptus citriodora. After extraction with SPME fibers coated with PDMS/ DVB, it was possible to identify or detect 33 compounds emitted by this plant. A semiquantitative approach was applied to monitor the behavior of the emitted BVOC during 9 days. Circadian profiles of the variation in the concentration of isoprene were plotted. Using diffusion-based SPME quantitation, a recently introduced analytical approach, with extraction times as short as 15 s, it was possible to quantify subparts-per-billion amounts of isoprene emitted by this plant.