E-noses can be routinely used to evaluate the volatile profile of tomato samples once the sensor drift and standardization issues are adequately solved. Short-term drift can be corrected using a strategy based on a multiplicative drift correction procedure coupled with a PLS adaptation of the component correction. It must be performed specifically for each sequence, using all sequence signals data. With this procedure, a drastic reduction of sensor signal %RSD can be obtained, ranging between 91.5 and 99.7% for long sequences and between 75.7 and 98.8% for short sequences. On the other hand, long-term drift can be fixed up using a synthetic reference standard mix (with a representation of main aroma volatiles of the species) to be included in each sequence that would enable sequence standardization. With this integral strategy, a high number of samples can be analyzed in different sequences, with a 94.4% success in the aggrupation of the same materials in PLS-DA two-dimensional graphical representations. Using this graphical interface, e-noses can be used to developed expandable maps of volatile profile similitudes, which will be useful to select the materials that most resemble breeding objectives or to analyze which preharvest and postharvest procedures have a lower impact on the volatile profile, avoiding the costs and sample limitations of gas chromatography.
Keywords: Chemometrics; Drift correction; Electronic nose; Sequence standardization; Tomato.