This study provides cultivar-specific metabolic fingerprints of volatile organic compounds in the headspace of cloudy apple juices. Cloudy juices from 47 « true to type » apple cultivars grown under identical agricultural and climatic conditions in South Tyrol, Italy, have been analysed through headspace solid-phase microextraction gas chromatography coupled with high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry (HS-SPME/GC--HRTO-–MS), yielding cultivar-specific volatile organic compound (VOC) profiles. Apple cultivars included 10 old cultivars with local relevance, 18 commercial cultivars, dominating the current international market, 10 scab-resistant and 9 red-fleshed ones. The 28 most abundant VOCs were found in the whole dataset, indicating a remarkable chemodiversity within juices. The main discriminant metabolites were butyl acetate; pentyl acetate; 2-methylbutyl acetate; pentan-1-ol; hexan-1-ol; n-hexanal and (E)-2-hexenal. A principal component analysis (PCA) and a hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) have not identified a clear separation of the analysed cultivar classes. Nevertheless, a series of scab-resistant and red-fleshed cultivars with VOC profiles similar to established commercial cultivars were identified; these data could help substituting current cultivars with more sustainable ones. On a more general basis, our study supports a knowledge-driven selection of apple cultivars for specific consumer preferences and helps appreciating the biodiversity of apples across old local and more recent (scab-resistant and red-fleshed) cultivars.Read less <