Study of the volatile component and the flavonoid content of edible flowers

In recent years, a growing interest among farmers and chefs has been oriented toward edible flowers, which are now popular in modern cuisine and appreciated by consumers. Their expansion is not limited to the aesthetic value, but also to flavor and nutritional aspects that supply to food and beverages. The aim of our research is to characterize edible flowers in terms of aromatic profile and the nutritional component to provide an objective approach able to discriminate one product from another on the market considering the peculiarities of each variety available. In the first step of the study, reported in this paper, an HS-SPME/GCMS and an ASE/HPLC-UV methods were developed to assess the volatile fingerprint and the flavonoid content in edible flowers. The resulting chromatographic profiles of the analysis of a wide set of samples will then be processed by multivariate statistical analysis to build classification models (next step of research, in progress).