Review of the role and methodology of high resolution approaches in aroma analysis

• Recent developments in the GC–O technique are described.
• Various pre-fractionation methods prior to GC–O are summarised.
• MDGC and GC × GC coupled with MS and olfactometry for flavour analysis are discussed.
• Selected innovative online MDGC–O approaches and their applications are reviewed.
• The future outlook for advanced separation technologies in aroma analysis are proposed.

Analysis of the odour complexity in food and beverage products demands high resolution approaches for distinguishing individual aroma-impact compound(s), and for assessing their contribution to the global aroma of a sample. This paper aims to review current applications incorporating different advanced separation methodologies, and their roles in achieving high resolution aroma analysis. This includes prior low resolution gas chromatography–olfactometry (GC–O) with fractionation procedures using chemical manipulation, adsorption chromatography and ion exchange separation. Innovative multidimensional gas chromatography (MDGC) arrangements that are appropriately designed with olfactometry are of specific focus here. The revelation of resolved components using these integrated approaches provides significantly improved knowledge of aroma composition in samples.

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