A comparison of high‐ and low‐resolution gas chromatography–mass spectrometry for herbal product classification: A case study with Ocimum essential oils

Introduction Selection of marker compounds for targeted chemical analysis is complicated when considering varying instrumentation and closely related plant species. High‐resolution gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), via orbitrap detection, has yet to be evaluated for improved marker compound selection. Objective This study directly compares high‐ and low‐resolution GC–MS for botanical maker compound selection using Ocimum tenuiflorum L. (OT) and Ocimum gratissimum L. (OG) for botanical ingredient authentication. Methods The essential oils of OT and OG were collected via hydrodistillation before untargeted chemical analysis with gas chromatography coupled to single‐quadrupole (GC‐SQ) and orbitrap (GC‐Orbitrap) detectors. The Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking (GNPS) software was used for compound annotation, and a manual search was used to find the 41 most common Ocimum essential oil metabolites. Results The GC‐Orbitrap resulted in 1.7‐fold more metabolite detection and increased dynamic range compared to the GC‐SQ. Spectral matching and manual searching were improved with GC‐Orbitrap data. Each instrument had differing known compound concentrations; however, there was an overlap of six compounds with higher abundance in OG than OT and three compounds with a higher abundance in OT than OG, suggesting consistent detection of the most variable compounds. An unsupervised principal component analysis (PCA) could not discern the two species with either dataset. Conclusion GC‐Orbitrap instrumentation improves compound detection, dynamic range, and feature annotation in essential oil analysis. However, considering both high‐ and low‐resolution data may improve reliable marker compound selection, as GC‐Orbitrap analysis alone did not improve unsupervised separation of two Ocimum species compared to GC‐SQ data.