Fingerprinting mass spectrometry by PTR-MS: heat treatment vs. pressure treatment of red orange juice—a case study

Abstract Proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS) is more and more applied to rather different fields of research and applications showing interesting performances where high sensitivity and fast monitoring of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are required. Based on this technique and aiming at the realisation of an automatic system for routine applications in food science and technology, we tested here a novel approach for fingerprinting mass spectrometric detection and analysis of complex mixtures of VOCs. In particular, we describe and discuss corresponding head space (HS) sampling methods and possible data analysis techniques. As a first test case we studied here the properties of four red orange juices processed by different stabilisation methods starting from the same industrial batch: untreated juice, thermal pasteurised (flash and standard) juice and high pressure stabilised juice. We demonstrate the possibility of a fast automatic discrimination/classification of the samples with the further advantage, compared to the use of electronic noses, of useful information on the mass of the discriminating compounds. Moreover, first comparisons with discriminative analysis by a sensory panel shows evidence that there is a correlation between the ability of the PTR-MS to distinguish different juice samples and that of a panel of trained judges with the obvious advantages of an instrumental approach.