Methods of analysis of herbs and spices

Abstract

The quality of spices depends largely on the chemical signatures of the essential oils and oleoresins contained within them. Every importing country has developed quality requirements for spices and in this context standard analytical techniques for quality assessment of spices have been established. This chapter describes some of these methodologies, discussing general analytical methods, distillation and extraction techniques. and methods of identifying the constituents of essential oil s and of estimating the oleoresins in spices. Methods for quantifying antioxidant capacity and estimation of crude fibre arc also described.