COMPARISON OF MAIN AROMA CONSTITUENTS OF APPLE, BANANA AND STRAWBERRY

Aroma volatiles from apple cv. Golden Delicious, banana cv. Cavendish and strawberry cv. Chandler were isolated by dynamic headspace procedu re. Compounds were identified by capillary gas chromatography-mass spe ctrometry, and sensorially characterized by sniffing GC. The main arom a constituents in all fruit studied were volatile esters; some of them were found to be present in two or three of the fruits under investig ation. Impact compounds determined in each fruit by sniffing technique were: hexyl butanoate, hexyl 2-methylbutanoate and hexyl hexanoate in apple; isoamyl acetate and sec-pentyl acetate in banana; and ethyl bu tanoate, ethyl 2-methylbutanoate and ethyl hexanoate in strawberry.