Abstract
Quality control of raw materials (RM) in the flavour and fragrance (F&F) industry is a key step requiring a huge number of analytical techniques to characterize and quantify an ingredient.Spectroscopic methods are required to characterize an ingredient. In the F&F domain, RMs are very complex; spectroscopic methods are generally hyphenated with separative techniques such as gas chromatography (GC) or liquid chromatography (LC), sometimes preceded by a purification step, for a formal identification of their analytes, by mass spectrometry or NMR. Some isotopic techniques can be used to check naturality and authenticity of a RM or pure compounds. The example of vanilla authentication will be taken through the beans extraction by ASE (Accelerated Solvent Extraction), LC/UV profiling and vanillin purification prior to isotopic analyses.Analytes quantification is also a key step of the quality control. Volatile constituents are generally quantified by GC hyphenated to a flame ionization detector. This study describes the creation of a relative response factors (RRF) database for a future quantification and, in the case of missing standards, proposes a prediction model based on combustion enthalpies.F&F industry is facing restrictions of some substances that might be toxic or allergenic and that should be quantified at trace level. Two collaborative studies were driven by the European committee of normalization of the French syndicate Prodarom in order to validate innovative methods to quantify the 26 allergens. They are presented as well as optimized methods to analyse furocoumarins, phototoxic constituents of some Citrus essential oils.