Food Analysis by Hyphenated Separation Techniques

Dear Colleagues,

In recent decades, the globalization of the food trade and markets has made wide variety of food products available to consumers, who are constantly seeking for high-quality food products as a guarantee of authenticity. In this context, fraudulent activities and fake information regarding the origin or quality of food products may mislead the consumer or even have important implication for human health. Regulatory authorities have established quality specifications and adopted identity standards to assess food quality and authenticity. Nevertheless, the natural diversity or complexity of food matrices and the most disparate adulteration techniques make the detection of quality parameters and the prevention of adulterations a challenging task.

Different techniques aimed at the authentication and detection of quality are necessary and valuable tools for the authorities that carry out the safety and quality controls of food and also implement countermeasures against fraudulent activities. Many analytical methods are available, and they are adaptable to the demands of operators in food control and marketing. Those methods include targeted and untargeted approaches useful for the detection and identification of particular compounds or classes, specific parameters indicating a potential sample adulteration that connects to a specific variety, geographical origin or quality marker, or aims to identify molecular components or overall compounds as univocal fingerprints of matrices useful for the determination of authenticity and genuineness.

The analytical methods most extensively employed comprise traditional separative techniques, such as chromatography, connected to various detectors to reveal and identify analytes, e.g., UV-vis, fluorescence, infrared (IR), Raman, NMR spectroscopy, or mass spectrometric detection. Eventually, more than one chromatographic technique, based on different separation mechanisms, can be coupled to solve issues associated with complex matrices. In other cases, the analytical instrumentation can support and be connected to traditional or emerging extractive methods with less environmental impact. Finally, the analytical means can also include alternative mutually hyphenated innovative techniques that represent faster, easy-to-use, specific methods that are alternative to traditional ones, which although consolidated, suffer or lack necessary and useful characteristics to deal with more sophisticated fraudulent activities or require tools of higher sensitivity and specificity.

The Special Issue aims to include all those techniques and methods that can in various ways have an important impact in the food field, not only involved in the quality control, but also involved in the qualitative and quantitative characterization of food matrices or the identification of molecules responsible of important activities.

Dr. Domenica Mangraviti
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• food
• quality control
• authenticity
• fraudolent activities
• targeted and untargeted methods
• chromatography
• spectroscopy
• mass spectrometry
• hyphenated techniques
• extraction methods
• innovative methods.