Abstract
Basil is a plant known worldwide for its culinary and health attributes. It counts more than a hundred and fifty species and many more chemo-types due to its easy cross-breeds. Each species and each chemo-type have a typical aroma pattern and selecting the proper one is crucial for the food industry. Twelve basil varieties have been studied over three years (2018–2020), as have four different cuts. To characterize the aroma profile, nine typical basil flavour molecules have been selected using a gas chromatography–mass spectrometry coupled with an olfactometer (GC–MS/O). The concentrations of the nine selected molecules were measured by an ultra-fast CG e-nose and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was applied to detect possible differences among the samples. The PCA results highlighted differences between harvesting years, mainly for 2018, whereas no observable clusters were found concerning varieties and cuts, probably due to the combined effects of the investigated factors. For this reason, the ANOVA Simultaneous Component Analysis (ASCA) methodology was applied on a balanced a posteriori designed dataset. All the considered factors and interactions were statistically significant (p < 0.05) in explaining differences between the basil aroma profiles, with more relevant effects of variety and year.
Highlights
Basil (Ocimum basilicum L.) is an annual plant of the Lamiaceae family, known worldwide as a culinary and healthy herb [1]
To characterize the aroma profile, nine typical basil flavour molecules have been selected using a gas chromatography–mass spectrometry coupled with an olfactometer (GC–MS/O)
analysis of variance (ANOVA) Simultaneous Component Analysis (ASCA) requires data coming from an experimental design, and we applied it to a balanced reduced set of varieties, in order to investigate the effects of cutting period, basil variety and harvesting year on the basil aroma pattern
Summary
Basil (Ocimum basilicum L.) is an annual plant of the Lamiaceae family, known worldwide as a culinary and healthy herb [1]. As basil is a very delicate plant, which is difficult to store after cutting [26,27], it would be extremely useful to have a fast analytical method, being at the same time suitable to discriminate the different varieties and furnishing information on the compositional profile of the aroma fraction. To this aim, in this paper, we tested an electronic nose system based on ultrafast gas chromatography (fast-GC) since it can provide a non-invasive, rapid, sensitive and relatively low-cost system. ASCA requires data coming from an experimental design, and we applied it to a balanced reduced set of varieties, in order to investigate the effects of cutting period, basil variety and harvesting year on the basil aroma pattern
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