Development of a low-cost portable aroma sensing system for identifying artificially ripened mango

Abstract Identification of naturally ripened mango using a pocket-friendly, portable aroma detection system (Aroma e-Sense) has been presented in this work. The study found 2, 5-Dimethyl-4-hydroxy-3(2 H)-furanone (DHF), a biomarker of artificially ripened (AR) mango. Hereto, a DHF imprinted polymer coupled to a quartz crystal microbalance (DHFIP-QCM) sensor has been fabricated to detect the important flavonoids. Aroma e-Sense with two modules, viz. DHFIP-QCM sensor, and signal processing module comprises of the crystal oscillator (10 MHz) synchronized with a frequency counter module, display module followed by storage module. The DHFIP-QCM sensor was designed using synthesized methacrylic acid-divinyl benzene polymer as sensing film. The developed Aroma eSense possesses significant repeatability (99.50 %), reproducibility (98.60 %), and stability towards DHF. Further, the developed system has been validated with standardized gas chromatography. Moreover, the Aroma e-Sense was found to be applicable to ensure whether mangoes are carbide treated or not.