Productive characteristics and volatile compounds of seven broccoli cultivars.

The agronomical characteristics and the volatile fraction of seven broccoli cultivars were studied using GC/MS and dynamic head space as the isolation method. 'Parthenon' and 'Shena' were the most productive cultivars although their heads did not have the best quality characteristics. The fresh inflorescences were analysed to identify the most volatile compounds. A total of 45 compounds were identified. The sulphur compounds made up the majority of the volatile fraction, representing over 50% of the volatiles identified for all of the broccoli cultivars except 'Parthenon'. Dimethyl disulphide was the most abundant compound in all the cultivars. Discriminant analysis of the volatile fraction was carried out for descriptive purposes to distinguish the different broccoli cultivars. The first two discriminant functions explain 75.8% of the cumulative variance; seven groups were clearly identified.