Application of mass spectrometry based electronic nose and chemometrics for fingerprinting radiation treatment

• Total mass spectra obtained from HS-MS for control and irradiated fruits.
• Grapes and apples are chosen for present study.
• Total mass spectrum was analyzed by two chemometric techniques (PCA and LDA).
• Successful segregation of control and irradiated samples achieved using chemometrics.

Volatile compounds were isolated from apples and grapes employing solid phase micro extraction (SPME) and subsequently analyzed by GC/MS equipped with a transfer line without stationary phase. Single peak obtained was integrated to obtain total mass spectrum of the volatile fraction of samples. A data matrix having relative abundance of all mass-to-charge ratios was subjected to principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) to identify radiation treatment. PCA results suggested that there is sufficient variability between control and irradiated samples to build classification models based on supervised techniques. LDA successfully aided in segregating control from irradiated samples at all doses (0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 kGy). SPME-MS with chemometrics was successfully demonstrated as simple screening method for radiation treatment.