Lipidomic Profiling in Stored Cut Cabbage for Assessing the Freshness Using Hilic-LC-MS-Method

Abstract A critical quality of fresh produces is their freshness. In order to improve postharvest management, a quantitative freshness assessment is necessary. By emphasizing the lipid profile, significant information about the physiological state may be obtained, which should increase the precision of determining the freshness of vegetables. This study aimed to examine the lipid profile and validate whether freshness signals were present in cut cabbage that had been preserved. Cut cabbage was stored at five, ten, and twenty degrees Celsius. Periodic samples were extracted for panelist evaluation, lipid analysis, respiration, color, and ascorbic acid. Lipid extraction was subjected to high-performance liquid chromatography (LC-MS/MS) using hilic mode. The obtained data were analyzed using multivariate analysis such as heatmap with hierarchical analysis and partial least square regression (PLSR). The LC-MS/MS successfully identified 133 lipid features from five common classes such as neutral glycerolipids, glycerophospholipids, glyceroglycolipids, sterol, sphingolipids, and fatty acid. The PLSR model using the normalized peak areas of each lipid species showed good performance for predicting the accumulated temperature (R2Y = 0.900 and Q2Y = 0.820). In addition, the selected freshness marker showed a coefficient of determination (R2) > 0.6, indicating good accuracy in predicting the freshness in stored cut cabbage. The result of this research provided a deep understanding of the alteration of lipid profile and showed the capability of the marker to predict the freshness in cut cabbage.