Electronic Nose and Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry for the Philippine Civet Coffee Discrimination

Civet coffee is recognized as the world’s most expensive “gourmet” coffee due to its unique taste and aroma. In this work a concrete and promising approach to the headspace profile aroma attributes of Philippine civet coffee using electronic nose (EN) and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) with SPME techniques was investigated. Chemometric pattern technique was applied to improve the discrimination of civet coffee against its control coffee beans (not eaten by civet animal). EN analysis has shown that aroma characteristic is one of the most important quality indicators of civet coffee. The result was supported by classical chemical techniques like GC-MS analysis with SPME. The chromatographic fingerprints indicated that civet coffees varied with their control beans in terms of composition and concentration of individual volatile constituents (qualitative and quantitative differences). Chemometric discrimination of EN and GC-MS data demonstrated a clearly separated civet from their control coffees, indicating that cultivar and geographic origins decree the aroma and volatile variations in coffee.