Survey of nutrients and quality assessment of crab paste by 1H NMR spectroscopy and multivariate data analysis

Abstract

Crab paste is a traditional and popular food for people in the coastal area of China. Visual inspection is currently the only method of quality assessment. We developed a new analytical method of a comprehensive survey of nutrients and quality assessment for crab paste based on a combination of 1H NMR spectroscopy with multivariate data analysis. The aqueous extract of crab paste was dominated by amino acids, sugars, carboxylic acids, nucleotides and amines (including 19 first-time-reported compounds such as choline, uracil and guanosine). Two grades of crab paste had significant compositional differences in terms of amino acids, lactate, N-acetylglutamate, choline, dimethylamine, uridine, 1-methylnicotinamide and 2-pyridienmethanol. These results provided important information on the grade-dependence of crab-paste composition, and demonstrated that NMR-MDA was effective not only for the comprehensive survey of nutrients, but also for quality assessment of crab paste. © 2012 The Author(s).