Biogenic Amines as Quality Marker in Organic and Fair-Trade Cocoa-Based Products

Donatella Restuccia,Ortensia Parisi,Nevio Picci,Umile Spizzirri,Michele Luca

doi:10.3390/su8090856

Abstract

In this study, the quantitative determination of eight biogenic amines (cadaverine, serotonin, histamine, spermidine, spermine, tyramine, putrescine and β-phenylethylamine) by an liquid chromatography method with evaporative light scattering detection was performed. The analysis of several samples of conventional, organic and fair trade cocoa-derivatives showed that organic and fair trade samples always contain much lower amine concentrations in comparison with their conventional counterparts, supporting the idea that biogenic amines can be regarded as cocoa quality markers. Irrespective of the kind of sample, results also showed that the most abundant amines were histamine, tyramine, spermidine, putrescine and spermine while β-phenylethylamine, cadaverine and serotonine have been found more rarely, all the amines never reaching dangerous amounts for consumer health. With the aim to confirm the experimental results, clustering analysis was performed on samples and instrumental results using principal component analysis.

Highlights

Cocoa (Theobroma cacao) plantations are one of the most important forms of land use and are of enormous economic importance to developing countries in the humid tropics
As biogenic amines (BAs) have been widely exploited as important indicators of safety and quality in a variety of foods [11], in previous studies, we reported the quantitative determination of BAs in cocoa derivatives [18], applying innovative analytical approaches [19]
The recorded data are of the same order of magnitude of those reported in previous studies concerning cocoa beans and chocolate from conventional agricultural which showed a total BAs concentration from a few μg·g−1 and never exceeding 35 μg·g−1 [20,21]

Summary

Introduction

Cocoa (Theobroma cacao) plantations are one of the most important forms of land use and are of enormous economic importance to developing countries in the humid tropics. The cocoa derivatives supply chain is very long, complex and includes many different actors. It begins with the cocoa farmers, who grow, harvest, extract, ferment, dry and pack the cocoa beans. The cocoa beans from several farmers are collected and often mixed by local buyers, traders, local buying stations and exporters until they reach the chocolate manufacturing plant, mostly located in Europe and North America (Figure 1). It follows that the cocoa manufacturers often receive very heterogeneous batches of cocoa beans. These findings seem to confirm the theory that higher heterogeneity is present in samples from countries

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Conclusion