Characterisation of Sclerocarya birrea (marula) seed oil and investigation of the geographical origin by applying similarity calculations, differential NMR and hierarchical cluster analysis.

The study demonstrates the potential of NMR as a tool in the quality control of marula seed oil. This technique requires very little sample preparation, circumvents derivatisation of the oil components with fast run-times. In addition, samples with chemical profiles that differ from the general signature profile can easily be identified.