Abstract
Processed fish roes are acquiring considerable importance in the modern food market, entering more and more often as an ingredient in food preparation and as caviar substitutes. In this study, we defined quality, traceability and safety issues related to processed fish roe products from different species. The results obtained allowed to distinguish eggs originated from different fish species and to discriminate between fish roes and caviar samples obtained from four different sturgeons species. We observed that roes showed a trend of grouping according to ecological and reproductive habits of fish species. We highlighted the differences between eggs originated by farmed and freshwater fish, enriched in n6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), and all the others, in which n3 PUFAs were prevalent. In addition, we evaluated processed fish roes under a food safety point of view, combining microbiological analysis with the determination of organic acids, used in some products as authorized preservatives. Microbiological characterization has proved a general good hygienic level for these products. Organic acids determination showed values in compliance with European Union (EU) regulations in almost of samples; in some cases, we found a mismatch between the organic acids detected and what was reported in labels. Processed fish roes could be considered a safe product that can provide to human nutrition a valuable content of essential fatty acids.
Highlights
Fish roe products has been historically present in many food cultures for a long time
All roe samples coming from the different fish species analyzed in this study were clearly distinguishable by mean of the model built on the basis of fatty acid data, with the exception of cod and Alaska pollack roes that showed a strong overlapping among groups
In the canonical bi-plot, samples belonging to groups cod, Alaskan pollock, lumpfish and capelin, pure marine species, were allocated in the same dial of the Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) chart related to n3 Fatty acid (FA), EPA and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), while pike and trout, freshwater and farmed species were in the opposite dial
Summary
Fish roe products has been historically present in many food cultures for a long time. Since usually fatty acid analysis performed by mean of analytical chemistry leads to the yield of large amount of data, chemometrics methods appear to be necessary in order to investigate the structure of large datasets, especially when samples have different origins and can be divided into groups. This is the case of Principal Component Analysis (PCA), where the significant dimensionality of data matrices is strongly reduced, allowing the analyst to more understand the structure of chemical data, still retaining a good amount of the original information [13]. Microbiological properties of the products and the assessment of the conformity with the label information have been investigated and discussed
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