Classifying Cheeses by Volatile APCI (vAPCI) Compact Mass Spectrometry

Cheese is one of the world’s most popular food types, with a wide variety available for consumers. The characteristic scents and flavors of cheeses stem from a complex mixture of chemicals, including free fatty acids. Use mass spectrometry to characterize the different volatile profiles of cheese.

In this application note, we demonstrate the capability of the Advion expression^® Compact Mass Spectrometer (CMS) to analyze volatile fatty acids of various types of cheeses using volatile APCI (vAPCI). By heating the cheese samples, we released various volatile compounds and analyzed the headspace without any sample preparation or derivatization. We then performed statistical analysis to group the cheese samples by their volatile profiles.