Liquid Chromatography Quadrupole Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry and Rapid Evaporative Ionization Mass Spectrometry Were Used to Develop a Lamb Authentication Method: A Preliminary Study.

Jishi Wang,Yanyun Wang,Shuming Yang,Chune Niu,Lei Xu,Zhenzhen Xu

doi:10.3390/foods9121723

Abstract

A untargeted metabolomics approach was proposed in this study based on ultra-high performance liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight (UHPLC-QTOF) and rapid evaporative ionization mass spectrometry (REIMS) to discriminate lamb and mutton meat and investigate their subtle metabolic differences, considering the higher popularity of lamb meat than mutton in the market. Multivariate statistical analysis was performed for data processing in order to distinguish between the two sample types. A total of 42 potential metabolites (20 in positive and 22 in negative ion mode) were defined for UHPLC-QTOF analysis, which provided references for discriminating the two kinds of meat. Furthermore, three potential markers were tentatively identified using LC/MS data against chemical databases. In addition, 14 potential metabolites were putatively identified in negative ion mode using the LipidMaps database. Meanwhile, the data-driven soft independent modeling of class analogy (DD-SIMCA) model was established, which could rapidly differentiate non-pretreated lamb meat and mutton with 92% specificity, rendering REIMS a promising technique for meat identification.

Highlights

Meat is an excellent source of nutrients, such as protein, fat, niacin, and micronutrients [1,2].with the globalization and complication of the food supply chain, meat adulteration has become a severe threat and attracted increasing attention
Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed using metabolic data to determine whether the two meat samples could be differentiated
The separation between the two groups was more obvious than the distribution of quality control (QC) samples, indicating that lamb and mutton were distinguishable

Summary

Introduction

Meat is an excellent source of nutrients, such as protein, fat, niacin, and micronutrients [1,2]. With the globalization and complication of the food supply chain, meat adulteration has become a severe threat and attracted increasing attention. Adulteration of meat products usually involves the incorporation of or substitution for cheaper ingredients and/or non-compliance with food hygiene regulations in manufacturing, processing, packaging, or storage [3]. In order to seek higher profit, unscrupulous traders often misrepresent meat product information, which infringes upon consumers’ rights [4]. The scandal of substituting horse meat for beef in Europe in 2013 posed a serious consumer trust crisis and attracted global attention as a meat adulteration incident [5]. Researchers conducted a study on 376 Finnish adulteration incidents in 2008 to 2012 notified by Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed and found that most were adulterated animal-derived products [6]

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Results

Conclusion