Volatilomics as a tool to ascertain food adulteration, authenticity, and origin

Over recent years, there has been an increase in the number of reported cases of food fraud incidents, whereas at the same time, consumers demand authentic products of high quality. The emerging volatilomics technology could be the key to the analysis and characterization of the quality of different foodstuffs. This field of omics has aroused the interest of scientists due to its noninvasive, rapid, and cost-profitable nature. This review aims to monitor the available scientific information on the use of volatilomics technology, correlate it to the relevant food categories, and demonstrate its importance in the food adulteration, authenticity, and origin areas. A comprehensive literature search was performed using various scientific search engines and “volatilomics,” “volatiles,” “food authenticity,” “adulteration,” “origin,” “fingerprint,” “chemometrics,” and variations thereof as keywords, without chronological restriction. One hundred thirty-seven relevant publications were retrieved, covering 11 different food categories (meat and meat products, fruits and fruit products, honey, coffee, tea, herbal products, olive oil, dairy products, spices, cereals, and others), the majority of which focused on the food geographical origin. The findings show that volatilomics typically involves various methods responsible for the extraction and consequential identification of volatile compounds, whereas, with the aid of data analysis, it can handle large amounts of data, enabling the origin classification of samples or even the detection of adulteration practices. Nonetheless, a greater number of specific research studies are needed to unlock the full potential of volatilomics.