| Abstract: |
European researchers have been able to successfully determine the origin of organic carrots via metabolomic fingerprinting, paving the way for an approach to authenticate organic food in the future and fight food fraud. Carried out by the European Commission's Joint Research Council (JRC), the study sought to investigate whether agronomic production techniques – such as soil quality, water and fertiliser management – affected the metabolite composition of carrots and whether this could be used to build models to predict the origin of the vegetable. The researchers found they could correctly classify 100 per cent of unknown samples according to agricultural practices when using yearly harvested samples over four years. " The results obtained indicate that metabolomics using a multivariate analysis approach is a promising tool to discriminate between agricultural systems… The results obtained indicate that the production system has a systematic influence on the carrot's metabolome," the researchers wrote in the journal Food Chemistry. |
