ISEP - DM – Biorrecursos
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Browsing ISEP - DM – Biorrecursos by Author "AZEREDO, BEATRIZ JORGE MAGALHÃES DE"
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- Caracterização e avaliação bioquímica de produtos marinhos para determinação de origem geográfica e qualidade nutricionalPublication . AZEREDO, BEATRIZ JORGE MAGALHÃES DE; Ferreira, Maria João Dantas Ramalhosa; Soares, Cristina Maria DiasSeafood fraud, particularly the mislabelling of geographic origin, undermines consumer trust and sustainable fisheries management. This study developed an integrated framework combining consumer insights, nutritional profiling, and amino acid (AA)-based chemometric analysis to authenticate the origin of Trachurus trachurus from the Portuguese coast. A consumer survey (n=102) revealed high awareness of seafood mislabelling (68%) but low selfefficacy in detecting origin (56%), underscoring a clear demand for scientific verification. Biochemically, gravimetric analysis of n-hexane extracts revealed that neutral lipid content varied significantly by region, ranging from 13.5% (Peniche) to 18.2% (Sines) on a dry weight basis. The crude protein content, determined by the Kjeldahl method, was consistently high (76.2–80.2%), with Olhão, Peniche, and Sines forming a distinct high-protein cluster. From 150 individual fish, High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) with methanesulfonic acid hydrolysis, optimised to preserve labile AAs, quantified 17 proteinogenic AAs via pre-column derivatization (OPA/FMOC) and fluorescence detection, with pronounced geographical variations observed in glutamic acid, aspartic acid, and proline. Multivariate analysis confirmed distinct location-based clustering in the AA profiles. To build a predictive authentication tool, machine learning models were developed and compared. A supervised Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) model achieved 82.7 ± 4.4% cross-validation accuracy, outperforming a Random Forest (RF) classifier (76.0 ± 7.8%), and demonstrated 66.7% accuracy on an independent test set. The top discriminative AAs for origin were glutamic acid, aspartic acid, tyrosine, tryptophan, and isoleucine. These results confirm that AA profiles serve as a robust biochemical fingerprint for geographical authentication. This research provides a practical, science-based framework to enhance traceability systems, thereby supporting sustainable fisheries and restoring consumer confidence in seafood supply chains.