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Comprehensive VOC profiling of an apple germplasm collection by PTR-ToF-MS

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Abstract

Fruit quality is generally represented by several components, among which aroma plays a fundamental role in determining the overall appreciation. To generate a comprehensive data inventory of aroma compounds in apple, a large collection represented by 190 apple accessions was characterized by a proton transfer reaction-time of flight-mass spectrometry (PTR-ToF-MS) instrument, a valid alternative to a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GS-MS) apparatus. The analytical performance of this instrument allowed to profile volatile organic compound (VOC) spectra of a portion of apple fruit flesh in a short time and efficient manner. Based on the VOC composition, the collection resulted grouped into six main clusters, mainly determined by ester and alcohols. These two VOC categories were also further exploited for the definition of an Alcohols/Esters index, which can be considered as a novel fruit quality descriptor useful for a further and more exhaustive characterization of several apple accessions. The distribution of these compounds and the possible further use of these information are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Agroalimentare e Ricerca project (AGER Grant No. 2010–2119). Authors wish to thank Pierluigi Magnago and his team for the maintenance of the apple collection, and Marco Fontanari for his support in fruit sampling.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Compliance with Ethical Requirements

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural Sciences, Bologna University, Via Fanin 46, 40127, Bologna, Italy

    Brian Farneti & Guglielmo Costa

  2. Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach, Via Mach 1, San Michele All’adige, 38010, Trento, Italy

    Iuliia Khomenko, Luca Cappellin, Valentina Ting, Andrea Romano, Franco Biasioli & Fabrizio Costa

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  1. Brian Farneti
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  2. Iuliia Khomenko
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  3. Luca Cappellin
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  4. Valentina Ting
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Correspondence to Brian Farneti.

Additional information

Brian Farneti and Iuliia Khomenko have equally contributed to this work.

Electronic supplementary material

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11306_2014_744_MOESM1_ESM.pptx

Supplementary Fig. 1. VOC production of two apple cultivars, ‘Golden Delicious’ and ‘Fuji’. In panel “a” it is depicted the difference in volatile production (esters, alcohols, carbonyl, and other compounds) between harvest and after two months of cold storage of intact apples for both cultivars, respectively. In panel “b” it is instead reported the same comparison described for panel “a” but performed on cut fruits. Each volatile chemical class, measured by PTR-ToF-MS, and expressed in ppbv, is reported in the legend

11306_2014_744_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Fig. 2. High resolution heat map and two-dimensional hierarchical dendrograms of VOCs patterns of 190 apple accessions assessed by PTR-ToF-MS

Supplementary Fig. 3. Pearson correlations of the PTR-ToF-MS masses detected among the 190 apple accessions

11306_2014_744_MOESM4_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Fig. 4. High resolution bar chart of average values, plus standard deviation, of volatile content of apple accessions belonging to the six clusters determined by Ward’s cluster analysis

Supplementary Fig. 5. VOC profile comparison of healthy and watercore affected apples of cvs. “Jolly” and “Seriana”

11306_2014_744_MOESM6_ESM.pptx

Supplementary Fig. 6. PCA score plot of volatile compounds assessed by PTR-ToF-MS on apple accessions measured during the first (white circle) and on the second (filled triangle) year

11306_2014_744_MOESM7_ESM.pptx

Supplementary Fig. 7. Correlation chart of the first two principal components (panels a, b) and of the index of absorbance difference (IAD, panel c) of 12 apple cultivars (showing a correlation lower than 90 %) assessed by PTR-ToF-MS and DA-meter during two the harvesting seasons

11306_2014_744_MOESM8_ESM.pptx

Supplementary Fig. 8. Correlation between the variation in ripening (ΔIAD, year 1 and 2) with the PC1 (a) and PC2 (b) values

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Supplementary Fig. 9. High resolution bar chart of the values of the AE factor (total alcohol content over the total ester content) of the 190 apple accessions

11306_2014_744_MOESM10_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Table 1. Subdivision of 190 apple accession assessed by PTR-MS into 6 cluster. Cultivar underlined are those assessed for the years consecutively

Supplementary Table 2. Variance analysis of each detected mass (threshold of 25 ppbv) for the six apple clusters

11306_2014_744_MOESM12_ESM.pptx

Supplementary Table 3. Table of the percentages of volatiles statistically different (P < 0.01) between each clusters based on pairwise ANOVA analysis

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Farneti, B., Khomenko, I., Cappellin, L. et al. Comprehensive VOC profiling of an apple germplasm collection by PTR-ToF-MS. Metabolomics 11, 838–850 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-014-0744-9

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