Application of an Electronic Nose to the quality analysis of tobacco varieties

Tobacco manifacturing represents one of the many possible applications of electronic nose technology. In this particular field it is extremely important to characterize the aroma of dried tobacco leaves and their possible aromatic yield when burned. In this paper an application of an electronic nose, based on quartz microbalances, to the field is presented. In particular, the experiment dealt with the classification of leaves from four different varieties of oriental tobaccos. Results shown the capability of the electronic nose to correctly classify the four varieties, furthermore, a certain correlation between some of the principal components and the merceological properties of the samples have been found.