Foodomics as the Future in Food Analysis? Opportunities and Challenges Compared to Targeted Assays

In the newly created concept of “foodomics”, targeted and non-targeted metabolomics play a key role to assess integrity and the “foodome” in general. Both metabolomics approaches are mainly based on LC-MS/MS and in targeted metabolomics accurate quantitation of the analytes is achieved by stable isotope dilution assays (SIDA) using isotopologues of the analytes as internal standards.

In the presentation, SIDAs for Fusarium mycotoxins in beers, for Alternaria toxins in vegetables and cereals and for the vitamins of the folate group will be covered. Examples for the global relevance of mycotoxins and diverse sources for dietary folates will be outlined.
For non-targeted metabolomics, suitable ultra-high resolution platforms such as Fourier transform ion cyclotron mass spectrometry (FT/ICR-MS) with respective examples for mycotoxins and vitamins will be presented.
The talk will be concluded with perspectives and limitations of the two metabolomics approaches for safety and nutritive quality of foods, and particularly for the concept of Food Integrity. This is a general term for sound, nutritive, healthy, tasty, safe, authentic, traceable, as well as ethically, safely, environment-friendly and sustainably produced foods.

Prof Michael Rychlik

Technical University of Munich, Germany

Prof Michael Rychlik is the Head of the Chair of Analytical Food Chemistry at the Technical University of Munich, Germany (TUM) and Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland.
He graduated in food chemistry at the University of Kaiserslautern in 1988.
His PhD studies on the flavour of bread were completed in 1996 and he was appointed full professor at the TUM in 2010.
In 2015 he served as a Visiting Professor at the University of Queensland (UQ), Australia and in 2016 he was appointed an Honorary Professor at the latter University.
In the last years he was also active as a Visiting Professor in 2016 at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and in 2018 at the Universisty of Hong Kong.
At the TUM School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Michael Rychlik was elected the Director of the Research Department Nutrition and Food Sciences in 2016.

His group has been working for 15 years in the field of developing analytical methods for bioactive food components, in particular for vitamins, mycotoxins, odorants and lipids. For these compounds, he developed stable isotope dilution assays that reveal superior accuracy. Moreover, his research is focused on the application of these methods to recent areas in food chemistry, technology, toxicology and nutrition. Since 2014 he serves as the Head of the “Committee on Contaminants in the Food Chain” at the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, Berlin, Germany.