Metabolomic studies of anthocyanins in fruits by means of a liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry workflow

Abstract

Among plant pigments, anthocyanins are one of the most important. However, there are great difficulties related to applying appropriate techniques able to identify molecules with similar structures (suchlike anthocyanins) and simultaneously estimate their variety and concentration within fruit matrices. Therefore, several methods have been evaluated to achieve the best workflows for anthocyanin analysis. For the first time, this review article presents the current findings on analytical procedures for anthocyanin investigation based on the robust liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (LC-MS) workflow. Anthocyanins extraction, LC-MS analytical instrumentation, and chemometric strategies that converge to the better performance of such workflow are herein presented. By means of this metabolomics platform, it is possible to obtain the most accurate identification of phenolic compounds, such as anthocyanins. This is a crucial step since these compounds are related to the sensory qualities of food, such as color, flavor, and aroma.

Keywords

• Extraction methods
• Analytical methods
• Chemometrics
• LC-MS
• Metabolites annotation