INNOVATIVE STRATEGIES FOR FOOD AUTHENTICITY ANALYSIS
Léa Heintz, Monika Moertter, Birk Schuetz, Manfred Spraul
Organization(s): Bruker BioSpin GmbH, Germany
In the field of food authenticity analysis, the need for efficient and reproducible non-targeted methods has increased since fraudsters chemically optimize their products in order to pass conventional analyses.
This presentation aims to show how Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (NMR) can be successfully applied to the routine authenticity analysis of food products. 1H NMR analysis, thanks to its high reproducibility, allows the acquisition of spectroscopic fingerprints of the samples. This allows the creation of reference databases which can be used unlimited in time and across laboratories without any calibration. Combined with multivariate statistical analyses it is possible to assess the authenticity of the sample and to detect any deviation to the reference database. Thus, even new frauds can be uncovered with this technique.
In addition, 1H NMR analysis allows the quantification of a high number of components, including sugars, organic acids, amino acids, without the use of reference standards and calibration curves. Reference concentration distributions can be created thanks to the reference database in order to give further indication on authenticity and quality of the tested samples. Based on these principles, our laboratory has developed fully automated methods based on 1H NMR for the analysis of several food matrices, in order to make them accessible to non-NMR specialists.
The strategy applied and the results obtained will be presented through examples from the screening of honey, wine and juices.
Lea Heintz
Léa Heintz received her B.S in Chemistry from the University of Strasbourg and her M.S. in Analytical Sciences from the University of Lyon.
She has experience in the development of Mass Spectrometry based methods for quantification of compounds in different matrices and with solid-phase extraction methods.
She was previously an application scientist at Bruker BioSpin working on the development of NMR-based methods for food matrices, to monitor authenticity and quality.
She is currently working as Product Specialist for food HR-NMR within the AIC NMR division of Bruker BioSpin, which focuses on applied and industrial applications.
