Video: Speeding up odor analysis for food science

Nothing beats our noses when it comes to recognizing flavorful aromas, good ones or bad ones. Developing analytical methods that can act like a human nose to quickly screen odorants could help food makers have tighter quality control during production to avoid smelly surprises in their end product. C&EN spoke with researchers Gavin Sacks and Jessica Rafson of Cornell University to learn about their latest advance toward that goal. They use silicone meshes to soak up odor molecules for direct analysis in real-time mass spectrometry (J. Agric. Food Chem. 2019, DOI:10.1021/acs.jafc.9b01091).