Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ORGANIC QUAL TRACERS (Organic food quality control and metabolomic fingerprinting)

Teaser

In the last decade, the consumption trend of organic food has increased dramatically worldwide. However, based on the literature reviewed, the legislative framework has not kept up with this market expansion, being necessary a further standardization of analytical chemical...

Summary

In the last decade, the consumption trend of organic food has increased dramatically worldwide. However, based on the literature reviewed, the legislative framework has not kept up with this market expansion, being necessary a further standardization of analytical chemical methods to support the accreditation bodies. The lack of reliable markers for the discrimination between organic and conventional products makes this market susceptible to attempted fraud. The Commission Regulation in a recent report (Regulations (EC) No 848/2018) has highlighted the need for greater cooperation between industry, Government, enforcement agencies, consumer groups and organizations. Besides, sampling procedures, efficiency of analysis on crop leaves as well as drift processes have also to be clarified.

The “ORGANIC QUAL TRACERS” project comes in response to the key requirement for solving the authentication challenges in the organic-food sector, especially in organic vegetables as they are the pioneering products in Europe. The results obtained with this proposal means an advance in one of the main challenges of EU society (productive and sustainable agriculture), and they contribute to the objectives set out in the Horizon 2020 Strategy “A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth”, improving the credibility among consumers towards organic products, thus facilitating a continuous growth of EU organic food markets. The project has confirmed the utility of the new state-of-the-art techniques in mass spectrometry analysis (IRMS and HRMS), in combination with chemometric analysis, to improve information (qualitative/quantitative) in both food control safety/quality and their application to organic products. It has offered analytical approaches to (i) obtain wide-ranging information about contaminants, (ii) determine natural components and (iii) establish (dis)similarities between products.

Work performed

Several field trials with different vegetable matrices (tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers) were conducted in greenhouses located in Almeria (Southeast Spain), under controlled agronomic conditions, using organic and conventional cultivation methods. Additionally, a pilot cross-contamination study was carried out in a green bean crop cultivated in greenhouse.

Regarding to isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) results, the analysis of nitrogen (N) as traces from production method, only δ15N data of the edible parts of tomato plants not provided a robust classification model to discriminate between organic and conventionally cultivation practices, since the addition of low or moderate rates of synthetic fertilizers to basal organic fertilization could not be confirmed by this methodology.

HRMS analysis results on pesticides residues control in organic food showed that within the scope of the pesticides analyzed with a multi-residue method (307 in total), 34 different pesticides were detected in a total of 111 commercial samples labelled with organic certification (only 3 authorized pesticides by organic production). Regarding non-authorized pesticides, phosphonic acid was the substance detected more frequently (with 38 detections), followed by the herbicide chlorpropham (6 times), chlorates (5 times) and the fungicide fludioxonil (4 times). In all cases, the concentration levels were below the MRL values established in the EU regulation, in agreement with good agricultural practice (GAP). Thus, the development and validation of pesticide multi-residue methods with LOQs below 10 µg/kg, it is an important factor for a better evaluation and detection of possible fraud in organic crops. Moreover, the cross-contamination study put in evidence that the drift contamination during the production process was very low (100 times lower as average in fruits) comparing to the treated plants. Additionally, these results also showed that the analysis of leaves could comprise a good temporal tracer of the misuse of pesticides.

The high level of selectivity and sensitivity of the HRMS techniques allowed the identification and characterization of natural food components, present at trace levels but able to allow to distinguish between conventional and organic production practices. The combination of multivariate statistical analysis (MSA) of MS profiling data was a useful approach for sample clustering according to farming production systems. However, MS profiling data are limited to specific crops. Therefore, continuous build-up of HRMS databases obtained under controlled agronomic conditions with different vegetable varieties and different geographical locations could facilitate to help ensure the detection of possible fraud cases, the authenticity of organic production, as well as the potential health benefits of organic products.

Finally, the most relevant results obtained in the project have been presented in several International Workshop (FoodIntegrity-2017, EuroFoodChem-2017, RAFA-2017 and Pesticides-2018) as well as in various scientific events (Researcher Night 2017 and The Science Week 2017). Some of these results have also been published in a scientific journal, in Gold Open Access (doi.org/10.1016/j.chroma.2018.03.002). In all cases, during the dissemination and outreaching activities, EU funding (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions) was acknowledged.

Final results

Spain is the biggest producer of these crops within the European Union (EU), accounting for 17% of the total organic farming area in the EU. Spain’s agricultural area dedicated to organic farming has increased almost 15% in a five-year period, from 1,756,548 ha (2012) to 2,018,802 ha (2016). According to the latest official data and bearing in mind that Almeria is the Spanish province with the highest number of registered organic producers (1,982 out of a total of 10,203 in Andalusia), It is clear that this production represents an important socio-economic impact in the area as it can improve the competitiveness of the producers/exporters. Therefore the results from the present project have an important contribution to both social as economic development in this area and by extension to the Mediterranean regions.

At the same time and give the high competitiveness in the food market, the project results can preserved the unequal competition of the third countries, increasing the confidence to consumers by revealing possible fraudulent practices in organic farming and, consequently, ensuring the authenticity of the EU labelled organic food and thus facilitating a continuous growth of EU food producers regions. Finally, the results of the project have generated technical and scientific documents, which have allowed to provide a reliable quality food control tool for routine laboratories but also they could to be used for organic certification bodies.