Heracles Ⅱ rapid electronic odor analyzer has been gradually applied in the study on the "odor" of Chinese medicine because of its ability to associate volatile substances in the sample with "odor", but its applicability is not clear. In this article, processed ginger products--dried ginger, roasted ginger, and carbonized ginger were chosen as examples to study the volatile chemical components, and the applied scope and accuracy of Heracles Ⅱ rapid electronic odor analyzer were verified by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry(GC-MS). Components in ten batches of ginger from different producing places were detected by GC-MS and Heracles Ⅱ rapid electronic odor analyzer. Principal component analysis(PCA) and discriminant factor analysis(DFA) were performed to investigate the effects of producing place and processing degree on dried ginger, roasted ginger, and carbonized ginger. The results showed that the processing degree had significant impact on the processed ginger products, while producing place was not significant to the processed ginger products. At the same time, 42 and 45 compounds were detected by Heracles Ⅱ rapid electronic odor analyzer and GC-MS, respectively, of which 29 compounds were common detected, with a coincidence rate of 64.4%. This result indicated that compared with GC-MS, Heracles Ⅱ rapid electronic odor analyzer had certain referential value in the qualitative analysis. Heracles Ⅱ rapid electronic odor analyzer, with the characteristics of convenience, high efficiency, and accuracy in processing data, has certain advantages in the "odor" research aiming to comprehensively evaluate volatile substances, and has a good application prospect in the quality control of Chinese medicine and its processed products.
Keywords: Heracles Ⅱ rapid electronic odor analyzer; carbonized ginger; discriminant factor analysis(DFA); dried ginger; gas chromatography-mass spectrometry(GC-MS); principal component analysis(PCA); roasted ginger.