Determination of volatile profiles of woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca) during fruit maturation by HS‐SPME GC–MS

Abstract BACKGROUND Aroma is an important agronomic trait for strawberries, and the improvement of fruit flavor is a key goal in current strawberry breeding programs. Fragaria vesca (also known as woodland strawberry) has become an excellent model plant with exquisite flavor, a small genome size and a short life cycle. Thus, the comprehensive identification of fruit volatiles and their accumulation pattern of F. vesca strawberries are very important and necessary to the fruit aroma study. This study examined the volatile profile changes from the fruits of three F. vesca genotypes during maturation using headspace solid‐phase microextraction combined with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry with multivariate analysis. RESULTS A total of 191 putative volatile compounds were identified, while 152, 159 and 175 volatiles were detected in 20–30 DAP (days after pollination) fruits of Hawaii 4 (HW), Reugen (RG) and Yellow Wonder (YW), respectively. Aldehydes and alcohols predominated in the early time point while esters were predominant during the late time point. Ketones were the dominant compounds from F. vesca strawberries at the ripe stage. Certain genotype‐characteristic volatiles were identified, including eugenol, γ ‐octalactone and δ ‐decalactone only detected in YW, and mesifurane was found in HW. CONCLUSIONS RG and YW showed very similar volatile compositions, but YW presented a greater number of volatiles and RG yielded a higher content. Differences in the volatile composition may be primarily due to genetic relationships. The metabolic changes that occurred during fruit ripening and characteristic volatiles will be a useful reference for future studies of strawberry volatiles. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry.