Advances in high-resolution mass spectrometry based on metabolomics studies for food – a review

Abstract

Food authenticity becomes a necessity for global food policies, since food placed in the market without fail has to be authentic. It has always been a challenge, since in the past minor components, called also markers, have been mainly monitored by chromatographic methods in order to authenticate the food. Nevertheless, nowadays, advanced analytical methods have allowed food fingerprints to be achieved. At the same time they have been also combined with chemometrics, which uses statistical methods in order to verify food and to provide maximum information by analysing chemical data. These sophisticated methods based on different separation techniques or stand alone have been recently coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) in order to verify the authenticity of food. The new generation of HRMS detectors have experienced significant advances in resolving power, sensitivity, robustness, extended dynamic range, easier mass calibration and tandem mass capabilities, making HRMS more attractive and useful to the food metabolomics community, therefore becoming a reliable tool for food authenticity. The purpose of this review is to summarise and describe the most recent metabolomics approaches in the area of food metabolomics, and to discuss the strengths and drawbacks of the HRMS analytical platforms combined with chemometrics.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• food
• authenticity
• chemometrics
• DART
• liquid chromatography
• gas chromatography
• capillary electrophoresis
• high-resolution mass spectrometry
• ambient mass spectrometry

ORCID

Josep Rubert http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1634-2334

Additional information

Funding

Josep Rubert thanks the Generalitat Valenciana (Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport), for the VALi+d postdoctoral fellowship ‘Contractació de personal investigador en formació en fase postdoctoral 2014’ [grant number APOSTD/2014/120]. This work was also supported by ‘Operational Program Prague – Competitiveness’ [grant number CZ.2.16/3.1.00/22197], and the ‘National Program of Sustainability’ [grant number NPU I (LO) MSMT – 34870/2013].