Aroma of fresh field tomatoes

Florian Mayer*, Gary Takeoka, Ron Buttery, Youngla Nam, Michael Naim, Yair Bezman, Haim Rabinowitch

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

19 Scopus citations

Abstract

Although the flavor of tomatoes has been extensively studied over decades (1, 2, 3) it is not yet clear whether all odorants that are important contributors to fresh tomato aroma have been identified or whether the contribution of others has been overestimated. For the identification of the character impact odorants of fresh field tomatoes the method of aroma extract dilution analysis (AEDA, 4) was applied to several different tomato cultivars. This resulted in finding 20 odorants with flavor dilution (FD)-factors larger than 1, which seem to contribute to the flavor of fresh tomato. Among these were (Z)-3-hexenal, hexanal, 1-penten-3-one, 2-phenylethanol, (E)-2-hexenal, phenylacetaldehyde and β-ionone, but also β-damascenone, 4-hydroxy-2,5-dimethyl-3-(2H)-furanone (Furaneol®), methional, 1-octen-3-one, guaiacol, (E,E)- and (E,Z)-2,4-decadienal and trans- and cis-4,5-epoxy-(E)-2-decenal, some of which have been underestimated so far. One previously unknown flavor compound in fresh tomato aroma was identified as (Z)-1,5-octadien-3-one. Different methods of sample preparation were employed. Solvent assisted flavor evaporation (SAFE, 5) was found to be the most suitable method for the quantification of tomato odorants. The concentrations of all important odorants were determined in two different tomato cultivars and the odor units (ratio of the concentration of a flavor compound and its odor threshold) were calculated. The biggest differences between the two cultivars were found in the concentrations and odor units of methional, phenylacetaldehyde, 1-penten-3-one and 4-hydroxy-2,5-dimethyl-3-(2H)-furanone.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)144-161
Number of pages18
JournalACS Symposium Series
Volume836
DOIs
StatePublished - 2002

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