An Electronic Nose System Sensitive to the Aroma of Ascomycete Tuber

Abstract

An “electronic nose” based on a low-cost Metal-Oxide sensor-array is developed and tested for the detection of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) of samples of ascomycete Tuber or truffle. Truffles have highly appreciated gastronomical and nutritive merits and they own a variable characteristic aroma depending on their stage of maturation and species. The response of the gas sensors to a variety of truffle samples is monitored. Principal Component Analysis is applied to the extracted feature vectors. The results show that an intelligent odor-discriminating system based on a gas sensor array is possible and can contribute to the identification and classification of truffles