A proper metabolomics strategy supports efficient food quality improvement: A case study on tomato sensory properties

In agricultural and food products, typical quality parameters are sensory properties, shelf-life, safety, health, nutritional value, crop yield per area and disease resistance. It is known that these parameters are importantly determined by the metabolites in the crops and food products. Metabolomics is the state-of-the-art routine technique that can effectively facilitate the improvement of the food chain quality by analyzing key metabolites as efficient quality predictors, to deduce production improvement strategies and for screening and identifying traits for breeding. The aim of this paper is to show such a metabolomics strategy with a special focus on the combination of multiple analytical platforms for sufficient metabolite coverage and a validated multivariate data analysis to reliably determine key metabolites. As a demonstrator for the metabolomics strategy, it was applied to determine the key tomato metabolites with respect to selected sensory attributes. From a literature-based validation study and a comparison to standard used markers, the relevance of the found metabolites was shown.

Research highlights
► Metabolomics can give insight into molecular drivers of food quality.
► A proper metabolomics strategy is a key for success.
► We show a strategy with focus on good metabolite coverage and statistical validation.
► The relevance of the approach is shown in a tomato taste case study.
► The study results in metabolite lists that are largely supported by literature.