A Matter of Taste....Flavour Profiling by GCxGC-qMS/FID

The analysis of flavour compounds in many industries is important for a number of reasons. This can include the differentiation between genuine products and those of lower grade materials produced using different ingredients; for quality control purposes to compare different production batches to detect possible changes; and also in identifying any off-tastes or off-odours caused by aging and storage. The samples are often complex, containing many hundreds of organic compounds of varying polarities which may or may not contribute to the flavour. Separation of the compounds can be difficult on a single type of stationary phase and frequently, strong flavours are given by very low concentration analytes which may co-elute with high concentration analytes on several different stationary phases and, therefore, go undetected.