Direct minimally invasive enzymatic determination of tyramine in cheese using digital imaging

9 figures, 2 multimedia components.-- © 2021. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/An enzymatic method for the direct (without pretreatment) minimally invasive tyramine determination in cheese is proposed. Colorimetric test strips containing tyramine oxidase (TAO), peroxidase and 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (Q-TAO), allow tyramine determination through the RGB chromatic coordinates of the observed blue colour (LOD = 2.6·10−6 M, LOQ = 8.7·10−6 M, RSD% (n = 5; 1.8·10−4 M) = 3.2%). The strips are inserted in the sample for 2 min and then the RGB coordinates are measured using a smartphone. Previously, these Q-TAO strips have been also optimized for tyramine determination in cheese extract. To do that, a spectrophotometric method in solution for tyramine determination in cheese extracts has been developed, which included an in-depth study of the indicating reaction; this study has allowed to gain new information about the spectroscopic properties of different TMB species and, which it is more important, to detect cross-reactions between TAO and TMB species. A mathematical model has also been developed which relate the RGB signals obtained with the tyramine concentrations, the instrumental characteristics of the smartphone and the spectroscopic properties of the absorbing product of the enzymatic reaction.This work was supported by the MINECO of Spain (projects CTQ2016-76846R and PID2019-105408 GB-I00) and by Research groups funded by DGA-FEDER (group E25_17R, N&SB).Peer reviewe