Influence of sulfur fumigation on the volatile composition of lily bulbs evaluated by HS‐SPME/GC–MS and multivariate statistical analysis

Abstract BACKGROUND Lily bulbs are used as food and herbal medicine in the Chinese market. These are often sulfur‐fumigated during postharvest processing for bleaching and preservation. This study aimed to compare the volatile compounds in non‐fumigation and sulfur‐fumigation lily bulbs by headspace solid‐phase microextraction (HS‐SPME) coupled with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) detection and multivariate statistical analysis. RESULTS The results showed that sulfur fumigation led to the chemical transformation of certain original components and significantly changed the chemical characteristics of lily bulbs. A total of 56 volatile compounds were identified in the 12 samples, including one non‐fumigated and 11 sulfur‐fumigated lily bulbs. Based on multivariate statistical analysis, 13 most characteristic chemical markers were selected to distinguish non‐fumigated and sulfur‐fumigated lily bulbs. Moreover, the transformation mechanism of the four sulfur compounds and several chemical markers was inferred, which showed that an addition reaction and rearrangement reaction most occurred in the process of sulfur fumigation. CONCLUSION This newly proposed approach can be applied to ensure consistent quality associated with sulfur fumigation for lily bulbs and other food products. © 2025 Society of Chemical Industry.