Food flavour analysis using SIFT-MS

Gülşah Özcan Sinir, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at Bursa Uludag University, Turkey and she is an Associate Scientist at the J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry, CAS in the frame of the EU Researcher Mobility Project. Her major research contributions focus on Food Chemistry, Fruit and Vegetable Processing Technology, and Aroma Chemistry. She is interested in focusing on optimizing mass spectrometry methods for the determination of the geographical origin of a food product and adulteration by SIFT-MS. She obtained her Ph.D. in Food Engineering from Bursa Uludag University, Turkey in 2016, and she had a postdoctoral stay at the Ohio State University in 2018.

Food flavor and aroma are sensory characteristics of foods that influence the acceptability and purchasing decision of consumers. Some of these flavor components arise from the normal biosynthetic processes of animal and plant metabolism and hence are present in the raw meats, fish, fruits, and vegetables which constitute the basic constituents of our normal diet. As a scientist we are interested to measure flavor components of food for several reasons, such as to determine if our food is safe to eat or not, to describe consumer preferences and generate the most suitable flavor combinations, identify possible adulterations to protect human health and product quality, determination of geographical origin to protect producers and consumers right, etc. Selected-Ion Flow-Tube Mass Spectrometry (SIFT-MS) is a rapid and accurate analytical procedure for the real-time detection of trace gases by using the soft chemical ionization of the target gases. SIFT-MS has been applied in many areas, including food science. My research is aimed to produce mass spectrometry methods to optimize food flavor analysis techniques using SIFT-MS by shortening the measurement time with higher sensitivity.