Combining with volatilomic profiling and chemometrics to explore the volatile characteristics in five different dried Zanthoxylum bungeanum maxim.

Owing to the short picking period of the fresh Zanthoxylum bungeanum, the postharvest drying has become an essential operation before the storage and transportation of Z. bungeanum. To explore the effects of drying methods on volatile characteristics, the volatilomic profiling of five different dried Z. bungeanum was investigated by E-nose, HS-SPME-GC/MS, GC-IMS in combination with chemometrics. The results indicated that W1W, W2W and W5S sensors within E-nose analysis showed the strongest responses in both fresh and dried Z. bungeanum. According to the identification of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), terpenes, esters and alcohols played the major roles in the volatile formation of the fresh and dried Z. bungeanum. The samples derived from hot air drying showed the relatively similar features with the fresh sample based on the relative abundances of these major VOCs. According to the results of multiple factor analysis (MFA), GC-IMS showed the strongest ability in distinguishing the fresh and different dried samples. Compared with the high levels of terpenes in fresh group, the significant increasement of terpene alcohols and terpene esters from the degradation and transformation of bound terpenoids was the main characteristics of all dried Z. bungeanum. Using the GC-IMS datasets, a weighted correlation network analysis (WCNA) model was constructed to clarify the VOC characteristics in all detetected samples. Thereinto, 6 significantly correlated modules were identified in fresh and five different dried samples. Additionally, a total of 23 hub VOCs can be recognized as the potential biomarkers for better distinguishing the fresh and five different dried Z. bungeanum.