Review of the applications of metabolomics approaches in dairy science: From factory to human

Abstract

Dairy products are nutritious and are increasingly consumed as an important dietary component in China. Exploring the factors that affect the nutritional quality of dairy products and ensuring their safety have become the main focus of dairy research. The composition of metabolites in dairy products is large and complex. The levels and types of metabolites vary according to various factors in the process from factory to human dining table. Therefore, metabolites might be used to assess the nutritional value, traceability and authenticity, and physiological function of dairy products. This review's main goal is to introduce the most recent developments and applications of metabolomics as an efficient tool for comprehensively characterising the composition and dynamic changes of metabolites in the area of food science and nutrition research in the process of getting dairy products from factory to human. The examples are taken from the most relevant metabolomics work published from 2018 to 2022, focusing on potential marker metabolites and metabolic mechanisms related to dairy product quality, authenticity/traceability and dairy intake monitoring. The future direction of metabolomics in the field of dairy science was also discussed. This information will provide a reference for the further application of metabolomics technology to Chinese dairy products to develop their quality, safety and nutritional value.

Application of Microsatellites to Trace the Dairy Products Back to the Farm of Origin

“…Protein-based, spectroscopy, and chromatographic techniques are also available for the detection of adulteration of dairy products [2,9,14,15,30], and several DNA-based methods are available for species/breed differentiation in dairy products [2,9,16].…”

“…The traceability of dairy products with PDO or PGI labels has become an important issue for authentication because they have high commercial and nutritional value and the breeds and geographical origins from which these products are derived have been used as market symbols and have encouraged rural development and breed conservation [16]. DNA-based techniques, metabolomics approaches, and chromatographic methods have also been used for the verification of PDO or PGI products [2,[14][15][16]22].…”

“…Although primarily for financial gain, in many cases food fraud can have direct and/or indirect consequences on food safety [14]. In this context, cheese produced with milk originating from unauthorized farms (i.e., not checked by the health authority) could cause serious harm to consumers' health.…”

“…These techniques can be grouped into chemical/biochemical and molecular techniques [2,13]. Each method enables us to obtain information on the composition and characteristics such as geographical origin, presence of adulterants, and species or varieties used in the food production process [14].…”

“…Molecular traceability methods are currently applied for the identification of fraud and traceability and authentication of food products [6,[9][10][11]. They also play an important role in guaranteeing the origin and safety of food products and in supporting the development of areas with a marginal economy through the authentication of typical and niche products [13][14][15][16]. Among several molecular traceability systems, genetic methods are characterized by high efficiency, specificity, and sensitivity; moreover, they are applicable to different food matrices and processed products.…”