Abstract: In order to know the mechanism of flavor formation and the pathway of salination during salted hairtail processing from fresh hairtail through salting, soaking to desalt and two-stage drying, the changes of main volatile flavor compounds were analyzed. The volatile composition of fresh, salted, desalted, first dried and second dried samples was analyzed by solid phase micro-extraction (SPME) coupled to gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and NIST 05a.L MS spectral library searching and alignment. A total of 49, 72, 70, 75 and 72 compounds were identified in fresh, salted, desalted, first dried and second dried samples of hairtail, respectively. Hexanal, heptanal, octanal, nonanal, 1-penten-3-ol, 1-pentanol, hexanol and 1-octen-3-ol showed a higher level in second dried second dried (final product) with a relative content of 28.26%, 8.64%, 6.54%, 4.37%, 7.34%, 3.55%, 4.18% and 4.72%, respectively. The compounds responsible for the flavor of salted hairtail were mostly formed during salting and drying, consisting mainly of aldehydes, alcohols, ketones and alkanes, including hexanal, heptanal, octanal, nonanal, 1-penten-3-ol, 1-pentanol, hexanol and 1-octen-3-ol.

Key words: salted hairtail (Trichiurus haumela), solid phase micro-extraction(SPME), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), volatiles flavor compounds