Inorganic Elements in Mytilus galloprovincialis Shells: Geographic Traceability by Multivariate Analysis of ICP-MS Data

Abstract

The international seafood trade is based on food safety, quality, sustainability, and traceability. Mussels are bio-accumulative sessile organisms that need regular control to guarantee their safe consumption. However, no well-established and validated methods exist to trace mussel origin, even if several attempts have been made over the years. Recently, an inorganic multi-elemental fingerprint coupled to multivariate statistics has increasingly been applied in food quality control. The mussel shell can be an excellent reservoir of foreign inorganic chemical species, allowing recording long-term environmental changes. The present work investigates the multi-elemental composition of mussel shells, including Al, Cu, Cr, Zn, Mn, Cd, Co, U, Ba, Ni, Pb, Mg, Sr, and Ca, determined by inductively-coupled plasma mass-spectrometry in Mytilus galloprovincialis collected along the Central Adriatic Coast (Marche Region, Italy) at 25 different sampling sites (18 farms and 7 natural banks) located in seven areas. The experimental data, coupled with chemometric approaches (principal components analysis and linear discriminant analysis), were used to create a statistical model able to discriminate samples as a function of their production site. The LDA model is suitable for achieving a correct assignment of >90% of individuals sampled to their respective harvesting locations and for being applied to counteract fraud.

Elements in Soft Tissues of the Young Mediterranean Mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis Lam. 1819 Collected in Sevastopol Bay (Crimea, Black Sea): Effects of Age, Sex, Location, and Principal Morphometric Parameters

“…Discriminant analysis has already been successfully used for tracing the geographic origin of mytilids [ 91 , 92 , 93 , 94 ] and other bivalves [ 95 , 96 ]. However, in those works, element contents were analyzed almost exclusively in mollusk shells, and distances between sampling stations were much greater than those in the present study.…”

“…CAP applied to the element abundances in the shells of some clams [ 97 , 98 ] showed high accuracy in the correct classification of the clam shell samples. Principal component analysis was also applied to assign mussel samples to sampling locations [ 23 , 37 , 50 , 93 , 99 , 100 , 101 ], but with less success as this method is not perfectly intended for this purpose.…”

The origin of mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis): NIRS explanatory identification and the effect on consumers

“…As largely reported, the mussel tissues and shells composition (including the inorganic element bioaccumulation) is influenced by the geographical origin, but weight, dimensions, and spatial-environmental distribution also play a significant role ( Perošević et al, 2018 ). Forleo et al (2021) efficiently discriminated mussels of different origins using the multi-elemental composition of mussel shells assessed by inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry. In turn, bioaccumulation of trace elements in mussels is influenced not only by several biological characteristics (such as sex, size, sexual maturity, reproduction stages, etc.)…”

Elemental and spectral chemometric analyses of Octopus vulgaris beaks as reliable markers of capture location

“…Comparing the attained results in the present work with the ones previously reported for other nonedible matrixes from different seafood species (Table 2), show that the accuracy classification is in‐line with those previously reported. Although previous studies manage to achieve higher accuracy classifications, these were either attained with complementary matrix analysis (such as muscle tissue) (Martino et al., 2022) or for sessile organisms (Forleo et al., 2021; Ricardo et al., 2015). Previous works from our team (Duarte, Carreiras, et al., 2022) have reported higher classification accuracies for O. vulgaris using its ink elemental signature, although, and as stated before, ink is not always available as the ink sac can be often empty, due to animal stress during capture.…”