Application of Omics and Related Tools for the Analysis of Food Authenticity
The Virtual Seminar Series on Food Authenticity is organized by researchers and students at McGill and the University of Guelph.
Food fraud, an issue causing a $65 billion USD damage/year to the industry, happens when there are discrepancies between the labeling information and the real food in the package, and the discrepancies are caused by intentional practices for extra economic benefits. Effective prevention strategies are needed to protect all the stakeholders from economic loss, trust crisis and potential health damage (e.g., allergen, toxic adulterants). Among the different approaches, analytical tools that can identify fraudulent food products serve as the last barrier to prevent those products from contaminating the supply chain. Involving complex sample matrices, analytical tools for food authenticity analysis need to be sensitive and have a high resolution. Omics tools, originally developed to analyze collection(s) of chemicals in biological samples, have attracted attentions of food researchers due to their excellent performance in analyzing complex sample matrices. My presentat ion will focus on the omics-related tools that we have developed and applied to analyze food authenticity and safeguard the overall food integrity.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Yaxi Hu
Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Carleton University
Dr. Hu completed her B.Sc. in Biological Science from China Agricultural University in 2013; received M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Food Science degree from the University of British Columbia in 2015 and 2018. She then worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemistry, UBC from 2018-2020 and in the Food Research Division, Health Canada from 2021-May 2022. Dr. Hu has published 29 peer-reviewed articles in prestigious journals such as Analytical Chemistry, ACS Sensors, and Food Chemistry. Leading the Food Analytical Chemistry and Technology (FACT) Laboratory, Dr. Hu鈥檚 research focuses on the development of innovative analytical methods using spectroscopic, metabolomic and genomic tools, as well as microfluidic 鈥渓ab-on-a-chip鈥� platform to solve challenging and emerging food integrity issues faced by the agri-food industry.