Edible insects have been proposed as alternative source of protein as they do not need to use excessive quantities of resources such as arable land or water. As insects have great potential as food ingredients and products, there is still a lack of information and knowledge about their nutritional composition, chemical characteristics and functional properties. This study reports the use of chemometric and pre-processing analytical techniques combined with GC-MS data to elucidate differences or similarities in different anatomical parts of Australia edible green ants used as food ingredients. Loadings derived from the PCA analysis highlighted specific regions in the GC-MS chromatogram associated with different volatile compounds in the different anatomical parts analysed. The proposed methodology will allow to be focus on the analysis of “atypical” or critical samples, increasing the efficiency of the resources used as well as reducing its cost analysis and workload.

已经提出食用昆虫作为蛋白质的替代来源，因为它们不需要使用过多的资源，例如耕地或水。由于昆虫具有作为食品成分和产品的巨大潜力，因此仍然缺乏有关其营养成分，化学特性和功能特性的信息和知识。这项研究报告了化学计量分析和预处理分析技术与GC-MS数据的结合，以阐明用作食品成分的澳大利亚食用绿蚂蚁的不同解剖部位的差异或相似性。从PCA分析得到的负载突出显示了GC-MS色谱图中与分析的不同解剖部位中的不同挥发性化合物相关的特定区域。