Detection Strategies for Volatile Fragrance Released from Agricultural Products: Progress and Prospects

The volatile aroma released from agricultural products is closely related to the health status and quality of their growth, thus endowing the related detection with great significance. For example, the dynamic variation of the volatile chemical composition of a banana during the growth process can reflect its ripeness. Also important for quality monitoring and storage is to precisely and swiftly identify volatile compounds produced by mildew in rice and wheat. In this endeavor, the current detection technologies such as gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method (GC-MS)  cannot meet the pressing needs of smart agriculture in terms of real-time monitoring, cost-effectiveness, sensitivity, and detection speed, thereby necessitating alternative strategies to simultaneously satisfy these requirements. Aiming to provide an overall development trend in this field, this paper summarizes the existing detection technologies including GC-MS, E-nose, and sensory analysis with their respective shortcomings and challenges, and then proposes the application prospects. This work can effectively enrich the reliable monitoring methods for volatile agricultural fragrance while promoting the long-run development of smart agriculture.