Fast analysis of strawberry aroma using SIFT-MS: A new technique in postharvest research.

Highlights • SIFT-MS is a fast complementary technique to profile strawberry aroma. • SIFT-MS circumvents SPME pre-concentration allowing analyses of intact fruits. • Aroma differences between and within cultivars can be detected. • SIFT-MS and GC–MS provide similar classification results. • Tentative identification in SIFT-MS was confirmed by GC–MS. Abstract Aroma is an essential quality aspect of fresh produce and plays an important role in determining consumer liking and the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can serve as markers for fermentation and postharvest storage disorders. This study suggests Selected Ion Flow Tube Mass Spectrometry (SIFT-MS) as a candidate technique for the rapid, non-destructive and quantitative measurement of VOCs in postharvest quality research. Strawberry was chosen as a model fruit since its aroma is one of its main quality traits. Combining SIFT-MS in full scan mode with multivariate statistics allowed for inter- and intra-cultivar discrimination of strawberry aroma profiles. Further, by combining SIFT-MS with GC–MS it is possible to tentatively identify volatiles. As compared to GC–MS based approaches total analysis time was reduced by a factor 11. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]