In South Korea, increase in kimchi import from China has emphasized the importance of noticing the origin of production area, largely because of the price and safety concerns. Nevertheless, identification of it depends on a complex physicochemical method. Hence, the objective of this study is to develop a statistical algorithm applicable for analyzing volatile compounds measured by electronic nose so that the device can be used for simple classification of kimchi by its production origin. Discriminant function analysis (DFA), one of multi-variate analysis, was mainly used for analyzing big-size data of volatile compounds detected from kimchi produced either in South Korea or China. Result showed that DFA could completely separate 69 varieties of kimchi by its origin of production (39 from South Korea and 30 from China). This result suggests that volatile compounds can be an index for identifying origin of kimchi and consequently, electronic nose is an optimal option for identifying origin of kimchi production when combined with multi-variate statistics.

• Joon-Yong Shim(Department of Biosystems Machinery Engineering, Chungnam National University)
• Eun-Soo Park(Department of Biosystems Machinery Engineering, Chungnam National University)
• Jong-Tae Park(Department of Food Science and Technology, Chungnam National University)
• Byoung-Kwan Cho(Department of Biosystems Machinery Engineering, Chungnam National University)
• Wang-Hee Lee(Department of Biosystems Machinery Engineering, Chungnam National University)