Food origin classification: Mushrooms and cocoa
Funding: Simon-Nüssel-Stiftung
From: 11/2017 to 12/2019
Principal Investigator: Gerhard Gebauer
Contributor: Stefan G. Bindereif
The isotopic composition of the elements hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in natural products is essentially determined by the geographical (latitude, distance to oceans, proximity to mountains), climatic (temperature, precipitation), and geo-ecological (soil conditions, agricultural use) conditions at the place of their origin. Thus, in recent years, relative abundance analysis of stable isotopes has developed as an extremely promising technique for assigning the geographical origin of food products. Particularly reliable conclusions on the origin of food products are achieved by multi-element isotope analysis. The method has already been successfully used to identify the origin of wine, fruit juices, honey, milk, and meat.
In this project, the origin of mushrooms (especially chanterelles) and cocoa beans is traced for the first time with the help of multi-element isotope analysis.
Publications
| • Bindereif, SG; Brauer, F; Schubert, JM; Schwarzinger, S; Gebauer, G: Complementary use of 1H NMR and multi-element IRMS in association with chemometrics enables effective origin analysis of cocoa beans (Theobroma cacao L.), Food Chemistry, 299(125105) (2019), doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2019.125105 |