Electronic Nose investigation of strawberry aroma changes during osmotic dehydration

An electronic nose was used to detect the aroma evolution of strawberry fruits, cultivar “Camarosa,” during the osmotic dehydration in sorbitol and sucrose solutions. Strawberry sliceswere subjected to osmotic dehydration at 30 ◦Cfor 1, 2, 4, and 6husing either60%sucrose or60%sorbitol solutions.Volatilecompoundsof fresh and processed strawberry slices were analyzed by electronic nose and gas chromatography. Electronic nose was able to reveal changes in the aromaprofile during processing and permitted differentiation between dehydrated strawberry samples obtained by different osmotic treatments. The electronic nose has the advantage of being simple, rapid, and nondestructive. Such characteristics and the promising results of this work suggested that this device could be a useful and innovative tool to monitor strawberry aroma changes during osmotic dehydration, providing real-time information about the effects of processing conditions and allowing the optimization of technological parameters.