Abstract
In order to investigate the relationship between tobacco headspace volatiles and their smoking quality, the volatiles of 44 Japanese flue-cured tobacco samples were trapped by active carbon and analyzed by gas chromatography (GC). The volatiles related to smoking quality were studied by multiple regression analysis (MRA). Prior to MRA, the information on their GC profiles was condensed into the six principal components (PCs) which accounted for 84% of the variance in the 40 GC peaks. The results of MRA using three PCs showed precise predictions for scores of tobacco smoking quality (r = 0.90). The samples were roughly separated into groups according to their variety and stalk position on the plane for the selected PCs. The influences of the variety and stalk position on the smoking quality were also investigated by stepwise discriminant analysis (SDA). As a result of this study, it was found that the volatiles which were partially governed by their variety and stalk position may be used to evaluate the smoking quality of tobacco.
