Chemical odor code of food: potentials and challenges for multidimensional gas chromatography platforms

Modern - omics disciplines dealing with food (foodomics, flavour metabolomics, sensomics, flavoromics[1,2]) investigate sample constituents considered collectively (primary and secondary metabolites, compounds generated by thermal treatments and/or enzymatic activity) and open interesting perspectives in the correlation between biological attributes and chemical composition. Sensomics, in particular, focuses on revealing sensory-active compounds extending the investigation to all possible stimuli of the multimodal perception (aroma, taste, texture etc..) by comprehensively treating sample constituents and related properties (physicochemical properties, concentration in-the-matrix) together with their sensory activity (odor quality, odor threshold - OT, Odour Activity Value - OAV) [3]. Comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled with Mass Spectrometry (GC×GC-MS), integrated with high concentration capacity (HCC) automated sampling approaches, represent a high-throughput/high-informative platform for food volatiles fingerprinting with interesting potentials in sensory characterization [4]. The lecture presents the principles and the investigation strategies of advanced sensomic investigation through illustrative case-studies. A sampling design inspired by the pathways aroma compounds follow to reach the regio olfactoria (i.e. orthonasal and retronasal) enables a comprehensive characterization of key-active compounds responsible of sample sensory quality contamporarily opening a window on technological indicators and botanical tracers. The advanced sensomic platforms provide straightforward results and represent a bridge between high-throughput screenings with a complete and almost comprehensive profiling of volatiles related to flavour perception. In such a context, the information potential of each analysis increases and an almost complete sensory profile can be objectively delineated. References: [1] M. Herrero, C. Simõ, V. García-Cañas, E. Ibáñez, A. Cifuentes, Mass Spectrom. Rev. 31 (2012) 49 [2] J. Charve, C. Chen, A.D. Hegeman, G.A. Reineccius, Flav. Fragr. J. 26 (2011) 429 [3] J. Kiefl, G. Pollner, P. Schieberle, J. Agric. Food Chem. 61: 5226-5235 [4] C. Cordero, J. Kiefl, P. Schieberle, S.E. Reichenbach, C. Bicchi, Anal Bioanal Chem 407 (2015) 169