This paper presents current developments and future perspectives on the spread of advanced analytical tasks in the field of food volatile analysis. The topics outlined comprise (a) recent advances on miniaturized sampling techniques; (b) the potential and challenges of multidimensional gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometric detection for volatile identification and quantitation in samples with complex matrices;
Keywords: analysis of food volatiles; comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography; fingerprinting; multidimensional gas chromatography; sample preparation.
(c) the potential of comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography in fingerprinting studies, in particular for classifying complex samples in routine analysis; and (d) the key role of dedicated software tools for data elaboration with comprehensive two-dimensional separations.