Authentication of organically grown vegetables by the application of ambient mass spectrometry and inductively coupled plasma (ICP) mass spectrometry; The leek case study

Nicholas Birse; Philip McCarron; Brian Quinn; Kimberly Fox; Olivier Chevallier; Yunhe Hong; Ratnasekhar Ch; Christopher Elliott

doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2021.130851

Authentication of organically grown vegetables by the application of ambient mass spectrometry and inductively coupled plasma (ICP) mass spectrometry; The leek case study

Food Chem. 2022 Feb 15:370:130851. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2021.130851. Epub 2021 Aug 13.

Authors

Nicholas Birse¹, Philip McCarron², Brian Quinn², Kimberly Fox², Olivier Chevallier³, Yunhe Hong², Ratnasekhar Ch⁴, Christopher Elliott²

Affiliations

¹ ASSET Technology Centre, Institute for Global Food Security, School of Biological Sciences, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. Electronic address: n.birse@qub.ac.uk.
² ASSET Technology Centre, Institute for Global Food Security, School of Biological Sciences, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK.
³ ASSET Technology Centre, Institute for Global Food Security, School of Biological Sciences, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK; Avignon Universite, Maison de la Recherchem, Pole Structure et Infrastructure de Recherche Partagée, Campus Jean-Henri Fabre, Bâtiment A - Bureau A104, 301 rue Baruch de Spinoza BP 21239, 84911 Avignon cedex 9, France.
⁴ ASSET Technology Centre, Institute for Global Food Security, School of Biological Sciences, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK; Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, P.O. CIMAP, Kukrail Picnic Spot Road, Lucknow 226015, Utter Pradesh, India.

PMID: 34530348
DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2021.130851

Abstract

Health conscious and environmentally aware consumers are purchasing more organically produced foods. They prefer organic fruits and leafy vegetables as these are much less likely to have been exposed to contaminants such as pesticides. The detection of fraudulent activity in this area is difficult to undertake, because many chemical plant protection treatments degrade very quickly or can be washed off to remove evidence of their existence. It was found that when combining DART-MS with a compact, inexpensive and robust single quadrupole mass spectrometer, it was possible to differentiate organic from conventional leeks with 93.8% to 100% accuracy. ICP-MS results showed similar performance, with an ability to differentiate conventional from organic leeks with 92.5% to 98.1% accuracy. This study has paved the way for the certification of vegetables as being organically produced. The next step is to create data libraries to support the roll out of the methodologies described.

Keywords: Ambient mass spectrometry; Chemometrics; DART; Elemental analysis; Food fraud; ICP-MS; Metabolomics.

MeSH terms

Fruit
Mass Spectrometry
Onions*
Spectrum Analysis
Vegetables*