Improved approach based on MALDI-TOFMS for establishment of the fish mucus protein pattern for geographic discrimination of Sparus aurata

Abstract Food fraud is still a recurrent practice throughout food supply chains. In the case of seafood, misidentification of species and products repackaging constitute the most common frauds. Therefore, the development of appropriate analytical approaches to be used against food fraud is necessary. The present study goal is to explore for the first time, the possibility to differentiate between Sparus aurata from two different mariculture farms located in Madeira Island (Canical and Ribeira Brava), using the mass fingerprint of fish mucus obtained from MALDI-TOF MS and analyzed using Mass-UP software for multivariate statistical analysis and biomarker identification. It was possible to establish from the mucus protein fraction, a set of potential biomarkers for each location in a total of 35 peaks, being 17 peaks specific to Canical located farm and 18 to Ribeira Brava. The proposed analytical approach revealed a useful strategy providing accurate and fast results for fish geographical origin discrimination.