## 1 Introduction  
Brazil is a country that stands out for its climatic conditions and a large diversity of tropical fruits with distinctive exotic flavors, which are appealing to foreign consumers [1]. Red mombin (_Spondias purpurea_) is a small red fruit with pleasant aroma and flavor, commonly found in Central America and the Northeast of Brazil [2; 3] that is almost exclusively consumed locally due to its relatively short harvest period (between December and January). Nevertheless, this fruit presents good perspectives for commercial purposes since the use of postharvest technologies could extend its shelf life. Derivative products like red mombin powder can add value to this product, increasing the supply and allowing commercialization in regions were the climate is not favorable for its cultivation.  
However, fruit processing can affect the flavor, a critical quality attribute for consumers' acceptance [4; 5]. The volatile compounds that are involved in fruit aroma and flavor are produced by several metabolic pathways during ripening, harvest, postharvest and storage periods. Many volatile compounds can be found in a single fruit, but generally only a small group of compounds are responsible for the original aroma of the fruit. The different proportions of these compounds often determine the flavor properties and thus the quality of a fruit [6; 7].  
Drying is an alternative method to preserve food quality. Reduction of water content and moisture can reduce microbial growth and enzymatic activity, increasing the product's shelf life [8]. This process is also useful to reduce the product weight and volume, facilitating transportation and handling. One of the most common techniques to remove the water content from fruits is the spray-drying (SD) process that allows food products to dry in a relatively short time and can be carried out on an industrial scale [9; 10; 11]. One disadvantage is that SD uses heat, which can affect the volatiles composition of the final product. Furthermore, although the powder produced by SD has a longer shelf life than the whole fruit, this process must be evaluated with regard to the sensory attributes of fruits during storage. The classical approach to flavor analysis in food products involves the isolation of volatiles from the matrix, followed by pre-concentration, separation and identification. Headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) is a versatile technique for sample preparation and analysis, which offers several advantages such as high sensitivity, good reproducibility, and a simple, quick, solvent-free preparation [12; 13]. Among the several uses of HS-SPME, this technique can be a valuable tool for evaluating the processing effect of the volatiles composition of a food product and the stability of volatiles during storage.  
In this work, the volatile compounds of red monbim pulp were analyzed in fresh pulp and after the dehydration by the SD process. The stability of the powder volatiles profile after 60 and 120 days of storage in different packages was also checked. The results showed that HS-SPME could be a useful tool in industry to evaluate food products. It was also observed that the volatiles profile of red monbim pulp is stable for a period of longer than 100 days after dehydration. To our knowledge, this is the first time that an attribute related to a red monbim pulp product was evaluated for storage time.