Development of innovative methods for the multiple analysis of allergens in processed foods

This industrial doctoral thesis aimed to develop a multi-target method, based on ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS), capable to detect allergenic traces of different species of nuts and peanuts in a single analysis in complex matrices such as bakery products. Allergy to nuts and peanuts represents a global relevant problem, especially due to the risk of their ingestion as hidden allergens, as a result of cross‐contamination between production lines at industrial level occurring during food manufacturing. Mass spectrometry methods have a very high potential for the identification and quantification of allergenic ingredients at part-per-million (ppm) levels through the detection of peptide markers arising from the artificial digestion of their proteins.