An electronic nose-mass spectrometry (EN-MS) that profiles volatile compounds is a candidate device for identifying the geographic origin of cultivation of agricultural products when an adequate algorithm is derived. The objectives of this study were to apply two types of multivariate analysis, discriminant function analysis (DFA) and principal component analysis (PCA), to the volatile compounds detected by an EN-MS for the geographic classification of Chinese cabbage cultivated in Korea (42 samples) or in China (29 samples). DFA showed that Chinese cabbage from Korea were completely separable from those originating in China with 12 volatile compounds among the 151 detected. PCA revealed that Chinese cabbage data fell into two completely separable origins of Korea and China. This is the first study involving EN-MS data of volatile compounds with multivariate statistics to discriminate the geographical origin of Chinese cabbage, with further applications for other agricultural products.
Keywords: Chinese cabbage; Country of origin; Discriminant function analysis; Electronic nose-mass spectrometry; Principal component analysis.