4 - Mass spectrometry in food authenticity and traceability

Abstract

In the last years, the role of mass spectrometry (MS) and related techniques has been dramatically increased as an enabling tool in response to emerging food authenticity and traceability issues due to unmatched benefits such as high sensitivity, selectivity, and multi-analyte detection capabilities. In this chapter, the state of the art in ensuring food control across the supply chain is presented to illustrate the capability of MS for food authenticity and traceability assessment, highlighting the power of chemometrics for analyzing data structures from multiple analytical platforms. Chemometrics plays a key role in resolving some issues related to food authentication or traceability, being a useful tool for food scientists to classify unknown samples with similar characteristics for the determination of the authenticity and to associate a food product to the place of origin in the context of traceability. The features of MS coupled to chromatography or as stand-alone technique for elemental or molecular profiling are summarized for multiplex targeted and nontargeted screening methods. MS-based proteomics and metabolomics strategies represent an important challenge of the assessment of food authenticity and detection of food adulteration, because of their sensitivity, high-throughput and discriminating power. With its success in food authentication and traceability testing, MS can facilitate a variety of routine inspection tasks. In this respect, the use of validated protocols along with the participation in external Proficiency Testing Schemes can help to ensure comparability of measurements between laboratories and thus reliability of results.