LAUSR

An untargeted foodomics strategy based on ultra high performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole orbitrap and chemometrics was used to observe subtle differences in the molecule profiles of raw milk from different animal species (cow milk, goat milk and water buffalo milk), which could prevent the fraud activities in the dairy industry. In data-dependent acquisition (DIA), spectra for all precursor ions facilitated the comprehensive identification of unknown compounds in untargeted foodomics. Chemometrics techniques were used to analyse large amounts of complex data to observe the separation of different sample groups and find the potential markers of sample groups. Finally, five markers were putatively identified by potential markers identification workflow. The quantification results showed that β-carotene was found only in cow milk, ergocalciferol was found only in water buffalo milk, and the content of nonanoic acid, decanoic acid and octanoic acid in goat milk was higher than that in cow milk and water buffalo milk. The quantification of β-carotene enabled the detection of cow milk with a sensitivity threshold of 5% (w/w). This work provided an efficient approach for the discrimination of cow milk, goat milk and water buffalo milk. Compared with proteomics and genomics, the simpler analytical procedures, lower costs and higher speed of this work make it is of great benefit to routine operations.