Comparative assessment of flavor characteristics among three Cordyceps species by integrating electronic nose, GC-MS, GC-IMS, and HPLC

Cordyceps militaris (CM), Cordyceps sinensis (CS), and Cordyceps chanhua (CC) are the three most commercially important Cordyceps species, yet their flavor chemistry has never been systematically compared. An integrated flavoromics framework combining HPLC, amino acid analysis, electronic nose (E-nose), HS-SPME-GC-MS, HS-GC-IMS, quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA), and weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was therefore established. CM exhibited the highest equivalent umami concentration (20.47 g MSG/100 g) and umami amino acid contents, whereas CC was richest in sweet-taste amino acids. E-nose identified sulfur-containing volatiles as shared discriminators. HS-SPME-GC-MS and HS-GC-IMS resolved 334 and 49 volatile compounds, respectively, with twenty shared compounds confirming platform complementarity. 17 key aroma-active compounds (OAV > 1) were identified, of which ten were absolutely quantified by external-standard calibration. QDA anchored the instrumental fingerprints to human perception (umami–mushroom for CM, fishy–roasted for CS, citrus–sweet for CC). A four-compound biomarker panel (methyl phenylacetate, 2,6-diethylpyrazine, o-cymene, and methyl heptanoate) achieved 88.9% accuracy (AUC 0.74–0.88) in an independent 18-batch validation set. This sensory-anchored, cross-platform-validated framework provides a chemical basis for the authentication, quality grading, and functional food development of Cordyceps resources.