Classification of wine by determination of bioactive phenolic compounds using high resolution mass spectrometry

In this project proposal, metabolomic fingerprinting of wine samples will be examined using high performance liquid chromatography combined with ion mobility quadruple time-of-flight mass spectrometry (HPLC–IMS-QTOF-MS) for the first time. Bioactive compounds in wines from various red and white varieties produced in Macedonia and Austria from different wine regions and different vintages will be determined for the first time using a non-targeted fingerprinting approach on this analytical platform. An automated compound extraction algorithm will be employed for processing background-subtracted high-resolution MS data in order to correctly align compounds detected in analyzed samples. It is expected that a huge number of compounds will be determined that will enable powerful metabolomic fingerprinting of the studied wines and, therefore, provide a means to classify samples according to the geographic origin and grape variety as well as determination of wine authenticity. Data processing will be performed with sophisticated software that can process the high-resolution IMS-MS and MS/MS data from the measurements applying multivariate statistical analyses including principal component analysis (PCA), factor analysis (FA) and one-way ANOVA. Each chromatogram and IMS-MS spectrum will be regarded as an individual fingerprint of a wine sample, which includes information about grape variety, origin, vintage, physiological state, technological treatment, and other factors. These data will be used to create a database for the Macedonian wines, which will be the first database of its kind, as well as a database for the Austrian wines. Furthermore, characterization of the antioxidant properties of wines and wine bioactive phenols will be performed using electrochemical measurements with square-wave and cyclic voltammetry