Evaluating the integrity of complex foods by combined methods. Case study: bakery products containing chia, flax and sesame seeds

WUNDERLIN, D.; BARONI, V.; KOPKA, J.; PERAL GARCÍA, P.; BRIGANTE, F.; LUCINI MAS, A.; PIGNI, N.; RIBOTTA, P.; ERBAN, A.; ALT, C.; POSIK, D.; ZAPPA, M.; BRUNO, C.; LYALL, V.; GIOVAMBATTISTA, G.

Córdoba

Congreso; VII Congreso Internacional Ciencia y Tecnología de los Alimentos 2018; 2018

Outstanding nutritive seeds, including chia, sesame and flax, are highly appreciated by consumers looking for nutraceuticals. Thus, the development of methods to verify the integrity of such seeds as well as processed foodscontaining them is of public interest. We hypothesized that a tool-kit, constructed with chemical, genetic and metabolomic markers could be used to verify the integrity of both seeds and foods containing them. Thus, the main goal of this work was constructing a tool-kit with markers from different methods to identify chia, sesame and flax seeds, verifying if such markers remain stable from raw to processed foods. Tool-kit development was based on both target and non-target methods to identify suitable metabolites to be included in a model. Additionally, genetic markers were also investigated as a third tool to be integrated in the kit. Results show that chemical markers can be obtained by a target analysis of polyphenols profile with the help of chemometrics, while nontargetanalysis, coupled to bioinformatics machine learning technology, lead to non-biased marker discovery. A robust DNA extraction method was developed, in addition to multi-specie PCR-real time assay, based on rbcL gene and real time melt curve plots, which provide with an accurate evaluation on the presence of nutritive seeds in both raw and processed foods. The final step is integrating these three different tools in a unique, combined, tool-kit to fullassess the integrity of chia, sesame and flax from seeds to complex foods containing them. Bakery products supplemented with variable amounts of whole seeds (single or mixtures) were used to develop the tool-kit, which was tested with commercial products containing such seeds.