NMR Based Plants and Food Metabolomics

In these last decades, the "omics" era allowed to face new challenges, involving new analytical approaches. The point of view has been changed and a broader vision of the biological processes is forced for a proper understanding. This broadened the data size as well as the number of molecules to be monitored and in this sense "metabolomics" constitute the new approach. In these last years, several studies focusing the metabolite characterization of both foods and plants appeared in the literature. Particularly, two analytical approaches emerged for their pivotal role: mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). This latter technique, largely adopted in the past years for its peculiarity in the structural characterization of single molecules/biomolecules, experienced a new relaunch in the investigation of mixtures, especially food and plant extracts1-3. The NMR approach takes the advantage of analysing the metabolite content with a single experiment in a non-destructive way. Moreover, very simple or none sample preparation is required, thus making this technique very low demanding in terms of data acquisition and sample preparation. In plants, several studies are present concerning the metabolic investigations by NMR followed by the multivariate statistical analysis of data, allowing easier data interpretation, marker and/or new molecules discovery. Comparison of metabolite profile of treated or non-treated samples is also facilitated. In the present communication, the potentiality of the NMR approach will be presented with the aid of different practical examples. In addition, the basic elements of the NMR technique will be provided, also in combination with the use of chemometrics.