A method for quantitative determination of volatile organic compounds in marine macroalgae1

Abstract

Volatile organic compounds from macroalgae are collected by vacuum distillation and cryogenic trapping, transferred by closed‐loop stripping to Tenax‐GC traps, and thermally desorbed and analyzed by gas chromatography‐mass spectrometry. Nonpolar compounds exhibiting boiling points between 60° and 180°C are measured quantitatively with detection limits near 1 ng g −1 dry tissue. Several halogenated and sulfur‐containing volatiles, including some previously not detected in seawater in which the macroalgae were growing, are found in such tissue analyses.