Characterisation of the volatile profile of orange juice contaminated with Alicyclobacillus acidoterrestris

A rapid and reliable analytical method, based on the characterisation of the volatile profile by dynamic headspace extraction followed by gas chromatography mass–spectrometry, was developed in order to early detect Alicyclobacillus acidoterrestris spoilage in orange juice. Gas chromatographic peak areas were submitted to multivariate statistical analysis (principal component and linear discriminant analysis) in order to visualise clusters within samples and to detect the volatile compounds able to differentiate contaminated from not-contaminated samples. Significant differences in the volatile profile of the analysed samples were found, assessing the reliability of the proposed method to detect the A. acidoterrestris contamination in orange juice.Neither guaiacol nor 2,6-dibromophenol, usually regarded as A. acidoterrestris contamination markers, were detected in the analysed samples.