The impacts of the raising regime of Salmon species on their triacylglycerol composition revealed by easy ambient sonic-spray ionization mass spectrometry

Abstract Marine fish consumption is rising around the world due to the high quality of its nutritional components, including long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA), which are abundant and found as triacylglycerol (TAG) in the muscle and skin of Salmonidae family. Farm raised and wild species of Salmon have different diets, that directly influences their TAG composition. In this work, we demonstrate the evaluation of TAG composition of salmon species as an authenticity screening parameter. For this purpose, we propose the use of ambient mass spectrometry, here represented by the thermal imprinting (TI) easy ambient sonic-spray ionization mass spectrometry (EASI-MS), to offer a fast and ecofriendly method for TAG extraction and characterization of fish muscles and skins. Specifically, TI-EASI-MS was employed to obtain the TAG profiles of different species from Salmonids , which were compared using multivariate statistical analysis. Clear differentiation of wild-raised fishes was achieved based on their higher content of ions attributed to TAG containing PUFA when compared to farm-raised fishes. The TI extraction method was also compared to the standard Bligh & Dyer extraction protocol and the techniques were equivalent for Salmon species differentiation.