1H NMR profiling and chemometric analysis for ripening and production characterization of Grana Padano cheese.

Grana Padano (GP) cheese is a renowned PDO Italian cheese whose nutritional characteristics and market price are influenced by the ripening stage. In this work, it was demonstrated that the combined use of untargeted 1H NMR profiling and chemometric analysis can be used as a powerful tool to quantitatively characterize GP ripening and production, focusing on both aqueous and lipid fractions. An initial exploratory analysis revealed substantial variations in the aqueous fraction attributable to aging time, year and season of production. Multivariate analysis was adopted to show these differences, mainly attributable to amino acids. In contrast, the lipid fraction analysis highlighted the impact of production season on fatty acid unsaturation, influenced by feed variations. As regards the production process, this study focuses on the variations induced by bactofugation. In this respect, the aqueous fraction was found to be extensively influenced by this centrifugation step, affecting compounds crucial to organoleptic characteristics.

1H-NMR Approach for the Discrimination of PDO Grana Padano Cheese from Non-PDO Cheeses.

Protected Designation of Origin cheeses are products with high-quality standards that can claim higher prices on the market. For this reason, non-PDO cheeses with lower quality can be mislabeled as PDO or mixed with it for economic gain especially when the product is in a shredded form. Luckily, the production of PDO cheese is subjected to strict procedural specification rules that result in a product with a defined profile of its metabolites, which can be used for authentication purposes. In this study, an NMR metabolomic approach combined with multivariate analysis was implemented to build a classification model able to discriminate PDO Grana Padano cheese from a large dataset of competitors. The great advantage of the proposed approach is a simple sample preparation, obtaining a holistic overview of the analyzed samples. The untargeted approach highlighted a "typical profile" of Grana Padano samples, which could be used for protection purposes. In parallel, the targeted results allowed us to identify potential chemicals, such as lactate, some amino acids and lipids. These initial results could open the road to a potential new additional tool to check the authenticity of PDO cheeses in the future.

Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in extra virgin olive oil authentication.

Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is a high-quality product that has become one of the stars in the food fraud context in recent years. EVOO can encounter different types of fraud, from adulteration with cheaper oils to mislabeling, and for this reason, the assessment of its authenticity and traceability can be challenging. There are several officially recognized analytical methods for its authentication, but they are not able to unambiguously trace the geographical and botanical origin of EVOOs. The application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to EVOO is reviewed here as a reliable and rapid tool to verify different aspects of its adulteration, such as undeclared blends with cheaper oils and cultivar and geographical origin mislabeling. This technique makes it possible to use both targeted and untargeted approaches and to determine the olive oil metabolomic profile and the quantification of its constituents.