Background: In recent years there has been a visible trend among consumers to move away from consuming meat in favor of plant products. Meat producers have therefore been trying to meet the expectations of consumers by introducing new products to the food market with a greater proportion of plant ingredients. Meat products are enriched not only by the addition of vegetable oils but also by ground or whole oilseeds or their preparation. In this study, we present in-solution tryptic digestion and an ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS)-based proteomics approach to investigate specific proteins and peptides of ten oilseed cakes, by-products of cold pressing oil from coconut, evening primrose, hemp, flax, milk thistle, nigella, pumpkin, rapeseed, sesame, and sunflower seeds, for authentication purposes.
Results: We identified a total of 229 unique oilseed proteins. The number of specific proteins varied depending on the sample, from 4 to 48 in evening primrose and sesame. Moreover, we identified approximately 440 oilseed unique peptides in the cakes of all the analyzed oilseeds; the largest amounts were found in sesame (107 peptides), sunflower (100), pumpkin, hemp (42), rapeseed (36), and flax cake (35 peptides).
Conclusions: We provide novel information on unique / species-specific peptide markers that will extend the scope of testing the authenticity of a wide range of foods. The results of this peptide discovery experiment may further contribute to the development of targeted methods for the detection and quantification of oilseed proteins in processed foods, and thus to the improvement of food quality. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry.
Keywords: food authenticity; mass spectrometry; oilseed; protein composition; species-specific peptides.
© 2020 Society of Chemical Industry.