Capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry metabolic fingerprinting of green and roasted coffee

Abstract

The aim of this work was to develop a capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (CE-ESI-QToF-MS) method to carry out the metabolic fingerprinting of green and roasted coffee samples (Arabica variety). To evaluate changes in the metabolic profiles of coffee occurring along the roasting process, green coffee beans were submitted to different roasting degrees. The effect of different parameters concerning the electrophoretic separation (background electrolyte, temperature, voltage, and injection time), the MS detection (temperature and flow of drying gas, sheath gas of jet stream temperature, and capillary, fragmentator, nozzle, skimmer, and octapole voltages) and the sheath liquid (composition and flow rate) was studied to achieve an adequate separation and to obtain the largest number of molecular features. The analyses were carried out in positive ESI mode allowing to detect highly polar cationic metabolites present in coffee beans. Non-supervised and supervised multivariate analyses were performed showing a good discrimination among the different coffee groups. Those features having a high variable importance in the projection values on supervised analyses were selected as significant metabolites for their identification. Thus, 13 compounds were proposed as potential markers of the coffee roasting process, being 7 of them tentatively identified and 2 of them unequivocally identified. Different families of compounds such as pyridines, pyrroles, betaines, or indoles could be pointed out as markers of the coffee roasting process. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.