Discrimination of conventional and organic white cabbage from a long-term field trial study using untargeted LC-MS-based metabolomics

Anal Bioanal Chem. 2014 May;406(12):2885-97. doi: 10.1007/s00216-014-7704-0. Epub 2014 Mar 12.

Abstract

The influence of organic and conventional farming practices on the content of single nutrients in plants is disputed in the scientific literature. Here, large-scale untargeted LC-MS-based metabolomics was used to compare the composition of white cabbage from organic and conventional agriculture, measuring 1,600 compounds. Cabbage was sampled in 2 years from one conventional and two organic farming systems in a rigidly controlled long-term field trial in Denmark. Using Orthogonal Projection to Latent Structures-Discriminant Analysis (OPLS-DA), we found that the production system leaves a significant (p = 0.013) imprint in the white cabbage metabolome that is retained between production years. We externally validated this finding by predicting the production system of samples from one year using a classification model built on samples from the other year, with a correct classification in 83 % of cases. Thus, it was concluded that the investigated conventional and organic management practices have a systematic impact on the metabolome of white cabbage. This emphasizes the potential of untargeted metabolomics for authenticity testing of organic plant products.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Agriculture / methods*
  • Brassica / chemistry*
  • Brassica / growth & development
  • Chromatography, Liquid
  • Denmark
  • Discriminant Analysis
  • Food, Organic / analysis
  • Mass Spectrometry
  • Metabolomics
  • Organic Agriculture / methods
  • Plant Leaves / chemistry
  • Plant Leaves / growth & development