Furosine and flavour compounds in durum wheat pasta produced under different manufacturing conditions: Multivariate chemometric characterization

• HS/SPME-GC/MS to identify flavour compounds in pasta samples.
• Study of pasta volatile profile in relation to manufacturing conditions.
• Volatile Maillard reaction products and lipid-derivatives as quality/process markers.
• PCA to discriminate pasta samples produced through different drying process.
• Comparison among volatile compounds and furosine as suitable markers.

The headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) technique followed by GC/MS analysis was performed to evaluate the volatile fraction of durum wheat pasta produced under different process conditions (artisan manufacturing methods or industrial processes). At the same time, HPLC analysis was performed to quantify furosine in the same pasta samples. Furosine is commonly used as an index of nutritional damage occurring during pasta drying, although drastic thermal treatments may lead to its underestimation. Moreover, since furosine determination requires time/solvent-consuming methods, a more convenient approach could be the identification of volatile compounds formed during the drying step and detectable through simple and automated methods. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was applied to experimental data in order to discriminate pasta samples according to their drying conditions. A limited number of volatile compounds including Maillard reaction and lipid-derived products (nonanal, hexanal, nonanoic acid, maltol and 2-furanmethanol) proved to be crucial in the differentiation of the samples. Therefore, these compounds could be used as pasta quality markers, alternatively to furosine, or as process markers to keep the drying treatment under control.