Application of HS-SPME/GC-MS for the discrimination of Parmigiano Reggiano PDO based on the origin of milk: type of forage offered to cow, mountain product and organic

The purpose of this study was to discriminate the volatile profile of seven PDO Parmigiano Reggiano cheeses based on the product certifications “organic” and “mountain product” and on the diet of the cows used to produce milk, between feed based on either dry hay or fresh forage by means of an untargeted volatilomic approach with Gas chromatography coupled with electron-multiplied-detector mass spectrometry, followed by unsupervised multivariate statistical analysis. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) allowed the partial separation of some of the classes based on the cheese certification, but no meaningful discrimination was observed for classes based on the cow diet. 2-pentanone, hexanoic acid and butanoic acid were the compounds with the highest discrimination potential. The findings of this study provide a reference for future quality and authenticity studies aiming to highlight biomarkers in the volatile fingerprint of Parmigiano Reggiano PDO products.