From rapid fingerprinting to detailed profiling: GC-IMS and GC-MS in food safety and authenticity assessment

The complexity of the global food supply chain and authenticity issues, including adulteration, ingredient authentication, and geographic origin verification, necessitate rapid and reliable analytical tools to safeguard consumer health. The gas chromatography-ion mobility spectrometry (GC-IMS) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) have surfaced as advanced and reliable techniques, allowing for on-site screening and confident compound detection and quantification. This review critically discusses GC-IMS and GC-MS, based on their analytical performance, strengths, limitations, applicability, and complementary use in food safety and authenticity. Further, existing operational challenges and future outlooks are presented, highlighting the need for standardized analytical procedures, advanced chemometric modeling, and hybrid GC-IMS and GC-MS workflows. The search for bibliometric data was conducted, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines to retrieve relevant literature from major scientific databases. Eligible studies were screened based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria before qualitative synthesis. Findings demonstrate that GC-IMS and GC-MS are complementary analytical techniques for food safety and authenticity assessments. Thus, GC-IMS offers a rapid fingerprinting tool for screening applications, whereas GC-MS provides superior compound identification and quantitative capabilities for confirmatory analysis. The data gathered in this review are crucial for building robust GC-IMS and GC-MS systems that will revolutionize and strengthen food safety and authenticity assessments in industry and research.