Seafood trade has been steadily growing worldwide over the las t decade, with aquaculture production play ing a key role. Food safety is increasingly important to consumers that want to know the origin and mode of production of their seafood . Traceability in seafood supply chains is increasingly becoming a requirement in importing countries to safeguard public health and ensure good practices. The concept of t raceability has been defined by the EU as the ability to trace and follow a food, feed, food-producing animal or substance intended to be, or expected to be incorporated into a food or feed, through all stages of production, processing and distribution. Implementation of seafood traceability regulations is especially challenging on origin certification, although EU legislation has specific requirements targeting seafood origin. It is worth emphasizing article 58 of EC 1224/2009 that states the need of “all lots of fisheries and aquaculture products shall be traceable at all stages of production, processing and distribution, from catching or harvesting to retail stage”.
DNA barcoding tools are commonly employed to reveal species mislabeling and adulteration but fail to resolve issues on the geographic origin of aquaculture products. These constraints can be overcome using elemental fingerprints of mineralized structures and biochemical approaches surveying the fatty acid profile and the lipidome of specific tissues . Both approaches are cost-effective, relatively fast and rely on well-established techniques. Both hold the potential to accurately discriminate cultured specimens originating from production sites less than 1 Km apart, with biochemical fingerprints also allow ing to infer the time elapsed post- after harvesting.
E lemental and lipidomic tools coupled with feature selection methods allow speeding-up biogeochemical and biochemical analysis (respectively) by determining which chemical elements and/or lipids best predict geographic origin. These approaches have already been successfully employed to discriminate the geographic origin of multiple farmed fish, shellfish and seaweed species, thus confirming their potential for origin certification and prevention of fraudulent practices.
Overall, these traceability tools can contribute to add-value to aquaculture products by safeguarding that trade chains are increasingly more transparent, by maximizing food safety and enhancing the trust of consumers on aquaculture products.
This work was financially supported by project TraSeafood (Tracing the geographic origin of seafood as a pathway towards the smart valorization of endogenous marine resources) (PTDC/BIA-BMA/29491/2017), funded by FEDER, PT2020 Partnership Agreement and Compete 2020 and by national funds (OE), through FCT/MEC. We also acknowledge FCT/MEC for the financial support to CESAM (UIDP/50017/2020+UIDB/50017/2020) through national funds and co-funding by FEDER, within the PT2020 Partnership Agreement and Compete 2020.