Partner Resources: LECO – GCxGC Analysis of Pesto

Anatune

15th March 2022

Aroma Analysis, Aroma Profiling, Aroma Volatiles, FMCG, Food Analysis,

pesto, aroma, evaluation, food, flavour, analysis, aroma evaluation

Pesto has been crafted since ancient times and to this day, though the primary base is consistent, with pine nuts, basil, and olive oil, individual recipes vary across the world. Each of these has its own unique flavour and aroma profile which is they key driver in the mind of a consumer looking to make a pesto purchase. Therefore accurate aroma evaluation is vital for producers looking to achieve the optimal product stability and product quality.

The ability to comprehensively analyse and characterise pesto recipe variations allows for better product development and subsequent customer satisfaction. GCxGC TOFMS makes it possible to detect some of the differences between the profiles and offers significantly enhanced flavour and aroma characterisation when compared to other methods.

To demonstrate this, our partners at LECO have created a new Application Note entitled Comprehensive Evaluation of Pesto Aroma Profiles Using SPME-GCxGC-TOFMS.

In the words of LECO:

“There are a high number of taste and aroma-critical chemicals in pesto products that are present at a variety of concentrations. A number of low level but high aroma potency species often coelute with numerous other species, including species present at high concentrations. It can therefore be difficult or impossible to separate and accurately detect them with conventional one dimensional GC-MS approaches.

In this study, we evaluate the use of comprehensive two-dimensional GCxGC-TOFMS to significantly improve the separation, detection, and therefore identification of species in pesto products to provide a significantly higher quality and more informative characterisation ability.

LECO’s Pegasus® BT 4D is capable of detecting hundreds or thousands more individual analytes than a simple single-dimensional GC-MS analysis with a single run. This provides a wealth of rich, high-quality data.

And with software tools such as ChromaTOF® software’s “References” function, individual analytes can be selected and compared between samples or sample sets.”