Sensory characteristics and key odor-active compounds of oxidized Antarctic krill oil: A comparative study with oxidized fish oil

Oxidized Antarctic krill oil (AKO) has unique sensory characteristics that have not been fully elucidated. This study was aimed to explore the sensory characteristics and key odor-active compounds of oxidized AKO by comparing with oxidized fish oil (FO) through accelerating storage experiments. The sensory evaluation results exhibited that oxidized AKO had a distinct ammonia odor and oxidized FO had an obvious fishy odor. GC–MS and GC-O analysis identified 21 and 28 odor-active compounds in AKO and FO samples, respectively, and the correlation analysis showed a good correlation between sensory attributes and odor-active compounds. Trimethylamine (27.73 mg/kg) was the key odor-active compound with an ammonia odor in AKO, and not found in FO. Although AKO samples also contains odor-active compounds such as 1-penten-3-ol (4.93 mg/kg) and 1-penten-3-one (1.12 mg/kg) contributing to fishy odor in FO samples, the masking effect between the odor compounds prevented obvious fishy odor from being sensed.