NMR in Chemical Ecology: An Overview Highlighting the Main NMR Approaches

Chemical ecology is a very important research area that focuses efforts on studying the role of chemical-mediated interactions between living organisms in the natural world. Understanding the chemical compounds involved in communication is of great value to the development of new strategies for sustainable agriculture, public health, life quality improvement, and environment preservation. Therefore, chemical ecology investigations use high-performance analytical tools with the ability to detect chemical compounds biosynthesized in very low amounts with the goal to fully determine their structures. In this light, NMR spectroscopy is the most powerful and versatile spectrometric technique that provides unique chemical structure insights, as well as potential interactions on an unprecedented level. This article presents a general overview, highlighting the possible NMR approaches such as quantitative NMR, capillary NMR, hyphenated techniques, high-resolution MAS NMR, solid-state MAS NMR, comprehensive multiphase NMR, and NMR-based ecometabolomics, used in chemical ecology investigations, in order to support research around the world and to further advance the scientific knowledge in chemical ecology.