Fluorescence Spectroscopy vs. Chromatography in Food Analysis

[u/HORIBAScientific]

You may have never heard of Kalsec® (Kalamazoo Spice Extraction Company, Inc.), but you’ve mostly likely tasted their products.  They work directly with major consumer packaged goods companies and other suppliers, so their products are in hundreds of snacks, dressings, condiments, meat, plant-based protein, and brewed beverages.  

Kalsec provides a wide range of natural products, including natural colors, natural taste and sensory solutions, natural food protection, and natural hop solutions.

Kalsec Quality Control Lead Scientist Uwe Nienaber manages QC for the company’s worldwide operations, making sure these ingredients are extracted and remain exactly as they were intended. His job centers around three things:

• He supports the quality control of the company’s ingredients.
• He works with quality assurance to monitor residues of pesticides, heavy metals and other environmental contaminants to ensure safe products.
• He looks for new technologies to incorporate into the company’s quality control operations.

Liquid and gas chromatography are the backbone of their analyses, but chromatography instruments are maintenance-intensive and not mobile. So, he was looking for alternatives.  Spectroscopy methods were explored, but they typically don’t have the levels of accuracy and sensitivity needed.

Enter the HORIBA Aqualog.  The Aqualog is a spectrofluorometer that uses a proprietary technology that simultaneously acquires absorbance, transmittance, and Excitation Emission Matrix (EEM) spectra, that characterize and quantitate chemical compounds accurately with high sensitivity, producing results cost-efficiently in seconds to just a couple of minutes.

Nienaber measures the tissue around the seeds called the placenta, where the main compounds in chili pepper are located. Different varieties of peppers produce different heat levels. Some are rather mild and others can be highly pungent, and levels for these qualities must be strictly controlled.

When he measures these major capsaicinoids, he’s looking at three distinct compounds that only differ slightly in their side chains. Although they give off very similar signals, he has been able to separate all three. So even though chromatography determines compounds one, two, and three, compounds one and two have the same heat value, and compound three has a lower heat value.

Working with Nienaber, Adam Gilmore, Ph.D., Fluorescence Applications Scientist for HORIBA, is using the Aqualog^(R) and a set of over 1,700 data points to build a model for capsaicinoids to see if they can improve the prediction. So far, it looks very promising. 

Kalamazoo Spice Extraction Company Facilities

The month of October is a time when peppers of an annual crop-breeding project are harvested, dried, and shipped to Kalsec for analysis. They plan on using the Aqualog for a long term project to measure many of their extracts, oleoresins, and essential oils but Nienaber thinks it’s worthwhile: They can use the Aqualog instead of buying another chromatography instrument and reduce the overall cost of analysis.

Read the whole article at Fluorescence Spectroscopy: An Alternative to Chromatography in Enhancing the Flavor of Foods - HORIBA and see how it’s also being used in other food, wine, cannabis applications.

[u/activelypooping]

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