A new concept for the measurement of total volatile compound of food

The aim of our work was to develop a rapid and reliable method for the eval uation of the total volatile fraction of fruits(strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes and apples). Our method consists of trapping the Volatile compound s of fruits on a solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fibre and determining t he total amount of the adsorbed substances after desorption in a GC system, without performing any separation. The patterns-obtained by using several types of SPME fibre permitted us to differentiate between the total volatil e compounds present in the sample depending upon their chemical nature. Usi ng strawberries as a model, we could show that our method: (1) leads to eas ily reproducible results; (2) allows differentiation between six varieties in a way which is consistent with an hedonic evaluation of these varieties; (3) shows the variation in total volatile compounds between individual fru its. The technique is rapid, practical. cheap, and promising for an objecti ve evaluation of the volatile fraction of fruits.