Headspace technology

Headspace technology is a technique developed in the 1980s to elucidate the odor compounds present in the air surrounding various objects. Usually the objects of interest are odoriferous objects such as plants, flowers and foods.^[1] Similar techniques are also used to analyze the interesting scents of locations and environments such as tea shops and saw mills. After the data is analyzed, the scents can then be recreated by a perfumer.

One of the early pioneers of this technology includes Roman Kaiser who used it to measure and characterize the scents of tropical rainforest. ^[2] Headspace techniques have since been used extensively to sample in vivo floral headspace of a large variety of numerous taxa and their aromatic compounds such as fatty acid derivatives (aldehydes, alcohols and ketones), benzenoids and isoprenoids.^[3]