Introduction
Pet food manufacturers place great importance on the aroma of their products, as off-odours may be unappealing to both the pets and their owners. Confident identification of the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from pet food can help these companies better understand the factors governing the release of pleasant and unpleasant aromas.
VOC aroma profiles are typically analysed by solid-phase micro-extraction (SPME), which although a fast and simple technique, can be limited in terms of sample capacity, reproducibility and sensitivity. An alternative to SPME is highcapacity probe-based sorptive extraction, which results in higher sample loadings because of the large volume of PDMS phase. Typically, a SPME fiber has a sorbent volume of just 0.5 μL, while HiSorb sorptive extraction probes contain 65 μL of sorbent. When used in conjunction with secondary refocusing by thermal desorption (TD), the result is greater sensitivity across a wide analyte range. Further analytical benefits can be achieved for analyte separation and detection, by using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled with time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC×GC–TOF MS). The enhanced separation capacity of this approach is ideal for handling the complex aroma samples of pet food, because it allows the entire composition to be screened in a single analysis, with confident identification of compounds that would ordinarily co-elute.
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