COMPARISON OF VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS EXTRACTION TECHNIQUES FOR THE COMPREHENSIVE CHARACTERISATION OF TOMATO PRODUCTS

Extracting volatiles with green techniques is a fast-approaching way to assess aroma and flavour compounds in the food and beverage industry as part of product development, determination of shelf-life and product quality, investigation of off-odours and in the analysis of competitive products. Therefore, it becomes pivotal to determine which volatile extraction method is the most comprehensive in trapping the principal aroma features of a complex food product. A powerful combination of sample extraction, analytical fingerprinting and profiling approaches were used to determine the volatile profiles of tomato products. Comprehensive analysis and reliability were assessed and the multi-step enrichment SPME technique proved to be the most suitable for discrimination between similar tomato-based products, by providing the broadest chemical panorama. Multi-step enrichment will be shown to improve the discovery and confident identification of trace-level aroma and flavour compounds which are of vital importance in food quality evaluation