The quality of coffee, which is essentially reflected in the aroma of the beverage, depends on several aspects that require multiple approaches to be verified, involving significant costs and long analysis times.

In this context, the purpose of a recent study, carried out by a group of Brazilian researchers (Mutz et al., 2025), was to develop and calibrate an electronic nose in combination with chemometrics for the analysis of the qualitative characteristics of this product.

In particular,twelve different metal oxide sensors were used to develop the instrument . The objectives of the analysis are as follows: (i) to distinguish between the species Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora, (ii) to differentiate between roasting profiles (light, medium and dark) and (iii) to separate expired samples from non-expired samples.

Principal component analysis (PCA) indicates a good grouping of the samples tested according to their specifications, highlighting the potential of volatile compounds in classifying the samples compared to traditional methods.