Agilent GC/MS/Olfactory machine running AromaTrax software
The Texas A&M Flavor Chemistry Laboratory is located on the 3rd floor of the Kleberg Animal and Food Sciences Center and consists of an Agilent gas chromatograph and single quadropole mass spectrometer (GC/MS) equipped with dual olfactory ports which enables the detection of aroma descriptors simultaneous with the detection, and quantitation of identified aroma chemical compounds separated by the GC. This includes the AromaTrax software that coordinates aromas identified by one or two technicians with the chemical compound released at that particular retention time. The result is that we are able to tie an aroma to a chemical compound.
Agilent 6545 High Performance Liquid Chromatography – quadrupole Time of Flight (HPLC-qTOF).
Also in this lab is an Agilent 6545 high performance liquid chromatograph (HPLC) equipped with a quadrapole time-of-flight mass (qTOF) spectrometer. This instrument is extraordinarily sensitive and allows the detection of chemical compounds in liquids to as small as picograms. We use this equipment to measure the metabolites of non-volatile flavor compounds to correlate with both the aroma compounds found with the GC/MS/O and a trained sensory panel.