Recent Advances in Geographical Traceability of Food Products

A special issue of Foods (ISSN 2304-8158). This special issue belongs to the section "Food Quality and Safety".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (2 June 2023) | Viewed by 9324

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Chemical and Geological Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, via Giuseppe Campi 103, 41125 Modena, Italy
Interests: thermophysics of non-electrolytic solvent systems; material chemistry: the improvement of the chemical and physical properties of plastic disposable products and the characterization of new biomaterials used for medical and food porpoises; food analytical chemistry: chemical characterization of food matrices for human and animal feed; geographic traceability of foods: development of new analytical methodologies for the geographic traceability of food matrices based on primary indicators such as radiogenic stable isotope ratios, isotope ratios of light elements and metals profile

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Chemical and Geological Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, via Giuseppe Campi 103, 41125 Modena, Italy
Interests: analytical food chemistry: development of analytical methodologies for the chemical characterization of food matrices for human and animal feed; geographical traceability of food: development and standardization of new analytical methodologies for the geographical traceability of food, principally based on stable radiogenic isotope ratios and metal profile

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

With the “from farm to fork” approach, the EU has in recent years promoted the principles and policies of quality and safety of food products and their production processes. In particular, typical and traditional productions have been awarded with recognizable marks and geographical indications that protect the names of the food and the savoir-faire of local producers. Many countries have adopted similar strategies to improve the quality of their food and commodities.

Although geographical indications were mainly developed to facilitate the intellectual property protection of qualifying products, consumers have become accustomed to identifying these appellations as a guarantee of quality, safety, and origin for the products, namely of the authenticity of the food.

On these bases, the certification of the authenticity of a product is of great relevance both for farmers, who may eventually benefit from an economic point of view by increasing their prices, and for consumers who may ask for even more detailed information about a food—in fact, the more a customer knows about a product’s origin and production, the greater the level of confidence they will have in the production processes. For these reasons, assessing the authenticity of a food and its geographical origin is a challenging issue, especially if the authenticity is evaluated based on objective parameters that overcome subjectivity and paper-based certifications. Consequently, technical approaches are becoming more and more complex.

In this context, technical improvements are visible in many research fields, spanning, for example, from the new generation of mass spectrometry instruments, both for organic and inorganic analytes, to enhancements in NMR spectroscopy. These have led to new opportunities in holistic approaches to geographical traceability and authenticity of food products, including the possibility of combining the high throughput of modern instrumentation with the interpretation capabilities of chemometric tools as a hybrid technique for big data analysis.

In addition to the knowledge acquired on particular food chains, thanks to the application of new analytical approaches, investigations have in many cases opened new windows on issues still not sufficiently explored or for which there is still an open debate among researchers. Typical examples are the mass-dependent fractionation process for heavy elements that take places during the nutrient uptake of the plant, the development of predictive models using chemometric tools to establish food authenticity, etc.

The main aim of this Special Issue is to focus on the latest works concerning the methodological and technological approaches in geographical traceability of food products. We believe that this issue will represent a valuable reference for scientific researchers interested in this field. Therefore, we encourage the submission of state-of-the-art papers to be published, including original research, communications and review articles, highlighting recent advances in food traceability, and related aspects, using different analytical techniques, which represent the challenges of research in this field.

Dr. Andrea Marchetti
Dr. Simona Sighinolfi
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • food authenticity
  • geographic traceability
  • food quality
  • light Isotopes
  • heavy Isotopes
  • elemental composition
  • molecular fingerprinting
  • chemometrics

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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10 pages, 1988 KiB  
Article
A Genotyping Method for Detecting Foreign Buffalo Material in Mozzarella di Bufala Campana Cheese Using Allele-Specific- and Single-Tube Heminested-Polymerase Chain Reaction
by Rosario Rullo, Simonetta Caira, Ioana Nicolae, Francesca Marino, Francesco Addeo and Andrea Scaloni
Foods 2023, 12(12), 2399; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods12122399 - 16 Jun 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1413
Abstract
Mozzarella di Bufala Campana (MdBC) cheese is a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) product that is important for the economy and cultural heritage of the Campania region. Food fraud can undermine consumers’ trust in this dairy product and harm the livelihood of local [...] Read more.
Mozzarella di Bufala Campana (MdBC) cheese is a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) product that is important for the economy and cultural heritage of the Campania region. Food fraud can undermine consumers’ trust in this dairy product and harm the livelihood of local producers. The current methods for detecting adulteration in MdBC cheese due to the use of buffalo material from foreign countries could exhibit limitations associated with the required use of expensive equipment, time-consuming procedures, and specialized personnel. To address these limits here, we propose a rapid, reliable, and cost-effective genotyping method that can detect foreign buffalo milk in a counterpart from the PDO area and in MdBC cheese, ensuring the quality and authenticity of the latter dairy product. This method is based on dedicated allele-specific and single-tube heminested polymerase chain reaction procedures. By using allele-specific primers that are designed to detect the nucleotide g.472G>C mutation of the CSN1S1Bbt allele, we distinguished an amplicon of 330 bp in the amplification product of DNA when extracted from milk and cheese, which is specific to the material originating from foreign countries. By spiking foreign milk samples with known amounts of the counterpart from the PDO area, the sensitivity of this assay was determined to be 0.01% v/v foreign to PDO milk. Based on a rough estimate of its simplicity, reliability, and cost, this method could be a valuable tool for identifying adulterated buffalo PDO dairy products. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Geographical Traceability of Food Products)
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18 pages, 2081 KiB  
Article
Stepwise Approach for Tracing the Geographical Origins of the Manila Clam Ruditapes philippinarum Using Dual-Element Isotopes and Carbon Isotopes of Fatty Acids
by Young-Shin Go, Eun-Ji Won, Seung-Hee Kim, Dong-Hun Lee, Jung-Ha Kang and Kyung-Hoon Shin
Foods 2022, 11(13), 1965; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods11131965 - 1 Jul 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2472
Abstract
While there are many studies that have reported methods for tracing the geographical origin of seafoods, most of them have focused on identifying parameters that can be used effectively and not the direct application of these methods. In this study, we attempted to [...] Read more.
While there are many studies that have reported methods for tracing the geographical origin of seafoods, most of them have focused on identifying parameters that can be used effectively and not the direct application of these methods. In this study, we attempted to differentiate the geographical origins of the Manila clam R. philippinarum collected from different sites in Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and China using a combination of analyses based on dual-element isotopes, fatty acids (FAs), and compound-specific isotopic analysis of FAs. We hypothesized that a stepwise application of new parameters to unclassified samples could achieve this objective by integrating new information while reducing time and labor. The FA profiles and compound-specific carbon isotopic values of FAs were found to enhance the discrimination power of determining the geographic origin up to 100%. Our findings demonstrate the advantageousness of using several parameters simultaneously over the conventional method of employing individual analytical methods when identifying geographic origins of the Manila clam, which could have implications for tracing the origins of different shellfish species or other food products as well. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Geographical Traceability of Food Products)
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Review

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24 pages, 855 KiB  
Review
Authenticity and Typicity of Traditional Cheeses: A Review on Geographical Origin Authentication Methods
by Marco Cardin, Barbara Cardazzo, Jérôme Mounier, Enrico Novelli, Monika Coton and Emmanuel Coton
Foods 2022, 11(21), 3379; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods11213379 - 26 Oct 2022
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 4417
Abstract
Food fraud, corresponding to any intentional action to deceive purchasers and gain an undue economical advantage, is estimated to result in a 10 to 65 billion US dollars/year economical cost worldwide. Dairy products, such as cheese, in particular cheeses with protected land- and [...] Read more.
Food fraud, corresponding to any intentional action to deceive purchasers and gain an undue economical advantage, is estimated to result in a 10 to 65 billion US dollars/year economical cost worldwide. Dairy products, such as cheese, in particular cheeses with protected land- and tradition-related labels, have been listed as among the most impacted as consumers are ready to pay a premium price for traditional and typical products. In this context, efficient food authentication methods are needed to counteract current and emerging frauds. This review reports the available authentication methods, either chemical, physical, or DNA-based methods, currently used for origin authentication, highlighting their principle, reported application to cheese geographical origin authentication, performance, and respective advantages and limits. Isotope and elemental fingerprinting showed consistent accuracy in origin authentication. Other chemical and physical methods, such as near-infrared spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance, require more studies and larger sampling to assess their discriminative power. Emerging DNA-based methods, such as metabarcoding, showed good potential for origin authentication. However, metagenomics, providing a more in-depth view of the cheese microbiota (up to the strain level), but also the combination of methods relying on different targets, can be of interest for this field. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Geographical Traceability of Food Products)
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