Abstract: Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are the main components responsible for the flavor of foods. The analysis of VOCs in foods, which can reveal a lot of information about some properties of foods, represents an easy and convenient means for studies in food science and technology and has become an important direction in the field of food analysis. Proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS), an important technique to detect trace amounts of VOCs, has many advantages including high sensitivity, short response time, no need for pretreatment, and easy operation, which can allow the determination of the absolute concentration of VOCs within several minutes and consequently the real-time monitoring VOCs changes in foods, facilitating effectively food safety supervision, food quality control, and the development of new products. This paper presents the working principle, basic structure and development of PTR-MS. Meanwhile, the current state of the art in the study and application in food field of PTR-MS in the full-scan mode and for the real-time monitoring VOCs is elaborately described. Finally, prospects for its future development are discussed.

Key words: volatile organic compounds (VOCs), food detection, proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS), full-scan mass spectrometry, real-time monitoring