Metabolomics Application on Bacterial Safety, Spoilage and Adulteration

In food science, metabolomics has been proven a valuable tool to investigate quality changes during processing, distribution and storage of raw materials and final products. In the area of quality and safety of processed foods metabolomics can contribute in (a) food classification, food adulteration and authenticity assessment, (b) quality control in food industry, (c) food spoilage, (d) association between sensory characteristics and chemical composition, and (e) impact of processing on food composition. Metabolomics have been proved very efficient in the detection of microbial metabolites that can be used as biomarkers in food spoilage under different packaging conditions (air, vacuum, modified atmosphere packaging) using HPLC, gas chromatography (GC) and/or mass spectrometry (GC-MS). In the context of the current presentation selected examples will be presented on the implementation of metabolomics in table olive fermentation, pasteurized vanilla cream spoilage, beef and pork meat spoilage  and marinade poultry as well as meat (beef, pork and horse) adulteration stored under aerobic and modified atmosphere packaging, through the evolution of volatile compounds detected by headspace solid phase microextraction gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy (Headspace SPME-GC/MS) and HPLC analysis. Moreover, pasteurized vanilla cream spoilage will be presented using SPME-GC/MS analysis.