Analysis of Volatile Compounds using Electronic Nose and its Application in Food Industry

摘要

Detection of specific compounds influencing food flavor quality is not easy. Electronic nose, comprised of electronic chemical sensors with partial specificity and appropriate pattern recognition system, is capable of recognizing simple and complex volatiles. It provides fast analysis with simple and straightforward results and is best suited for quality control and process monitoring of flavor in food industry. This review examines application of electronic nose in food analysis with brief explanation of its principle. Characteristics of different sensors and sensor drift, and solutions to related problems are reviewed. Applications of electronic nose in food industry include monitoring of fermentation process and lipid oxidation, prediction of shelf life, identification of irradiated volatile compounds, discrimination of food material origin, and quality control of food and processing by principal component analysis and neural network analysis. Electronic nose could be useful for quality controlin food industry when correlating analytical instrumental data with sensory evaluation results.