A flavour of omics approaches for the detection of food fraud

Abstract

Food fraud has been identified as an increasing problem on a global scale with wide-ranging economic, social, health and environmental impacts. Omics and their related techniques, approaches, and bioanalytical platforms incorporate a significant number of scientific areas which have the potential to be applied to and significantly reduce food fraud and its negative impacts. In this overview we consider a selected number of very recent studies where omics techniques were applied to detect food authenticity and could be implemented to ensure food integrity. We postulate that significant reductions in food fraud, with the assistance of omics technologies and other approaches, will result in less food waste, decreases in energy use as well as greenhouse gas emissions, and as a direct consequence of this, increases in quality, productivity, yields, and the ability of food systems to be more resilient and able to withstand future food shocks.