| Abstract |
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The aim of our work was to develop a rapid and reliable method for the evaluation of the total volatile fraction of fruits (strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes and apples). Our method consists of trapping the volatile compounds of fruits on a solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fibre and determining the 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 volatile compounds present in the sample depending upon their chemical nature. Using strawberries as a model, we could show that our method: (1) leads to easily 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 fruits. The technique is rapid, practical, cheap, and promising for an objective evaluation of the volatile fraction of fruits. |