Location: Commodity Protection and Quality Research
Project Number: 2034-30400-001-030-N
Project Type: Non-Funded Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 3, 2026
End Date: Jul 31, 2027
Objective:
Identify and quantify volatile chemicals associated with the postharvest quality of US specialty crops.
Approach:
The eating quality of fresh fruit can be impacted by varying agricultural and postharvest practices. A large component of eating quality is the occurrence of off-flavor and changes in aroma-active compounds that can occur because of product handling. To improve product quality and reduce food waste it is important to understand the basis of these quality changes. This can be achieved through integrating flavor chemistry with consumer sensory evaluation to develop predictive models that can connect aroma profiles to sensory quality. Achieving this goal will allow for increased consumption of fresh fruits and reducing food waste due to poor flavor attributes.
UC-Riverside scientists will use different flavor extraction techniques; solvent-assisted flavor evaporation technique and headspace solid-phase microextraction to extract delicate aroma-active volatiles compounds to measure odor sensory potential of various fresh agricultural crops via gas chromatography olfactometry and quantified target aroma-active compounds important to odor characteristic of target samples using stable-isotope-dilution-assay-gas-chromatography-mass-spectrometry under the technical supervision of ARS scientists.