Evaluating Changes in the VOC Profile of Different Types of Food Products After Electron Beam Irradiation

During the development of food radiation processing protocols, one of the aims is to find an optimal dose range for a specific type of product in which pathogenic microflora are inhibited while biochemical and organoleptic properties are not disturbed. When various food products are exposed to ionizing radiation, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are formed. Depending on the radiation dose, the list of VOCs and their content change, so they could be considered marker compounds for the description of irradiation-related processes. This work proposes a universal way to study and compare the profile of volatile compounds in products of animal and plant origin using GC-MS in combination with various data representation techniques, including unsupervised machine learning methods. The VOC profiles of beef, chicken, turkey, fish, and potatoes were examined.