TOOL-KIT TO ASSESS FOOD INTEGRITY OF CHIA, FLAX AND SESAME IN RAW AND PROCESED FOODS

GIOVAMBATTISTA, G.; ZAPPA, M.; ERBAN, A.; BRIGANTE, FEDERICO; BARONI, M.V.; LYALL, V.; POSIK, D.; RIBOTTA, PABLO D.; PERAL-GARCIA, P.; BRUNO, C.; WUNDERLIN D.A.; ALT, C.; LUCINI, AGUSTÍN; KOPKA, J.

BELFAST

Conferencia; Belfast Summit on Global Food Integrity Promotional (ASSET2018); 2018

QUEEN´S UNIVERSITY BELFAST

Outstanding nutritive seeds, includingchia, sesame and flax, are highly appreciated by consumers looking fornutraceuticals. Thus, the development of methods to verify the integrity ofsuch seeds as well as processed foods containing them is of public interest. We hypothesized that a tool-kit,constructed with chemical, genetic and metabolomic markers could be used toverify the integrity of both seeds and foods containing them. Thus, the maingoal of this work was constructing a tool-kit with markers from different methodsto identify chia, sesame and flax seeds, verifying if such markers remainstable in processed foods.Tool-kit development was based on bothtarget and non-target methods to identify suitable metabolites to be includedin a model. Additionally, genetic markers were also investigated as a thirdtool to be integrated in the kit. Preliminary results show that chemicalmarkers can be obtained by a target analysis of polyphenols profile with thehelp of chemometrics, while non-target analysis, coupled to bioinformaticsmachine learning technology, lead to non-biased marker discovery. A robust DNAextraction method was developed, in addition to multi-specie PCR-real timeassay, based on rbcL gene and real time melt curve plots, which provide with anaccurate evaluation on the presence of nutritive seeds in both raw andprocessed foods.Our current challenge is integrating threedifferent tools in a unique, combined, tool-kit to full assess the integrity ofchia, sesame and flax from seeds to complex foods containing them.Acknowledgement:This study was supported by FOODINTEGRITYgrant FP7-KBBE-2013-7-613688.