Marijana Ačanski¹, Kristian Pastor¹*, Vesna Vučurović¹ and Djordje Jovanović ²

¹Faculty of Technology, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia
²FIMEK, University Business Academy, Cvećarska, Novi Sad, Serbia

*Corresponding Author: Kristian Pastor, Faculty of Technology, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia.

Received: March 15, 2018; Published: April 11, 2018

Citation: Kristian Pastor., et al. “Comparing Performances of Microscopy and GC-MS Analysis in Cereal Flour Authentication”. Acta Scientific Nutritional Health 2.5 (2018).

Abstract

  The aim of this work was to employ light microscopic analysis of cereal starch granules in order to evaluate the possibility of cereal species authentication and differentiation according to appropriate botanical origin. Additionally, the goal was to compare the obtained results with newly published approach for cereal flour authentication using gas chromatography - mass spectrometry (GC- MS) instrument with multivariate data analysis in order to compare performances of the traditional and newly developed methods. The analyzed genotypes of the following cereal species: wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), rye (Secale cereale L.), triticale (Triticosecale Wittm.), barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), oat (Avena sativa L.) and corn (Zea mays L.), were obtained from the Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, Novi Sad, Serbia. Grain samples were milled into flour, starch suspensions were extracted from each sample and analyzed using a light microscope. The obtained light micrographs clearly demonstrated that starch characteristics of oat and corn samples could visually easily be differentiated from those obtained from the rest of the small grain species: wheat, rye, triticale and barely. These plant species contain similar starch granules (size, shape and size distribution), which is indicating that light microscopy is not a method able to discriminate them based on botanical origin. The results obtained are completely in agreement with those obtained by lipid profiling in flour samples of the same cereal plant species utilizing a GC-MS instrument with various multivariate data analysis tools, indicating that using both approaches it is possible to clearly distinguish the samples of gluten-free corn flour, from the samples of gluten-containing small grain flour, and among small grains to distinguish the samples of oat flour. Flour samples of other small grains demonstrate strong similarities.

Keywords: Cereal Flour; Corn; Small Grains; Light Microscopy; Starch

Copyright: © 2018 Kristian Pastor., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.