Location: Methods and Application of Food Composition Laboratory
Project Number: 8040-10700-003-002-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 13, 2020
End Date: Jul 12, 2025
Objective:
To develop holistic and metabolomic methods for foods that can be used to identify and authenticate whole foods, identify and quantify the carbohydrate fractions of carbohydrate rich foods, identify and quantify the small molecule content of the foods, and contribute to databases for plant and animal foods.
Approach:
ARS will develop holistic and metabolomic methods based on near infra-red (NIR) spectrometry, mass spectrometry (MS), and proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR) using both direct analysis (no prior separation) and prior separation by ion chromatography and ultra-high performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC). Spectral and chromatographic fingerprints will be used with multivariate analysis to identify, authenticate, and classify whole plant, botanical, and animal materials. Metabolomes of the materials will be identified and quantified. Specific chemical compounds (biomarkers) distinctive to each material will be identified. Analytical data acquired with both direct and chromatographic analysis will be used to construct databases to characterize the biological materials and serve as a base for future data mining.
