Headspace technology is a technique developed in the 1980s to elucidate the odor compounds present in the air surrounding various objects.
[1] Similar techniques are also used to analyze the interesting scents of locations and environments such as tea shops and saw mills.
One of the early pioneers of this technology was Roman Kaiser who used it to measure and characterize the scents of tropical rainforests.
[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.
Inert gases are passed into the space containing the object or a vacuum is established such that the odor compounds are removed from the headspace.