Abstract:Aiming to clarify the variation patterns of volatile compounds and freshness indicators of meat meal under different storage conditions, and reveal the correlation between volatile compounds and freshness, focusing on chicken meat powder, headspace solid-phase microextraction combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (HS-SPME-GC-MS) was employed to analyze volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in chicken meat powder stored under various conditions. In parallel, freshness indicators, including total volatile base nitrogen (TVB-N), acid value (AV), pH value, and total viable count (TVC) were determined in accordance with relevant national standards. A predictive model for freshness indicators based on VOCs was then established. Results showed that storage temperature, humidity, and duration had significant effects on the freshness indicators, particularly under high-temperature and high-humidity conditions, where all indicators increased markedly. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that temperature and humidity were the dominant factors affecting freshness. VOCs profiling demonstrated that both the types and concentrations of VOCs varied significantly across different storage conditions, with aldehydes and ketones showing the most pronounced changes. Correlation analysis identified 225 VOCs significantly associated with freshness indicators (|r|>0.5, P<0.05). Freshness indicator prediction models were developed based on the relevant VOCs using random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost). Among these models, XGBoost exhibited higher prediction accuracy. The prediction results of the XGBoost model showed TVB-N with R2=0.953 and RMSE=8.87 mg/(100 g), AV with R2=0.80 and RMSE=0.91 mg/g, pH value with R2=0.78 and RMSE=0.19, and TVC with R2=0.77 and RMSE=0.81 lg CFU/g, indicating the feasibility of freshness prediction based on VOCs. Furthermore, the Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) method was used to interpret the top 10 VOCs contributing to freshness prediction, identifying hexanal, nonanal, and 6-methyl-3-heptanone as key contributors. These findings can provide technical insights for meat powder storage and quality control, and offer a theoretical and technological foundation for the development of gas-sensitive sensors for freshness detection.