metabolomic strategies based on high-resolution mass spectrometry as a tool for recognition of gmo (mon 89788 variety) and non-gmo soybean: a critical assessment of two complementary methods

This study was focused on distinguishing of genetically modified organism (monsanto 89788 variety) and conventional soybeans by employing high-resolution mass spectrometry (hrms) techniques for non-target screening of sample extracts. two hyphenated instrumental platforms represented by (i) ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography (u-hplc) coupled to quadrupole/time of flight and (ii) ambient mass spectrometry with direct analysis in real time (dart) ion source-coupled orbitrapms were used. the statistical processing of generated data (metabolomic fingerprints) was performed by multivariate data analysis; principal component analysis (pca) and orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis (opls-da) showed that both employed techniques enabled correct classification of genetically modified and conventional soybeans. in addition, some phosphatidylcholines and sugars were identified as the most significant markers.