Ponente
Descripción
Selenium (Se) biofortification of plants has been suggested to enhance dietary Se intake and to prevent deficiency and chronic diseases in humans. Microgreens have become popular as foods in recent years because of their high nutritional values, distinctive flavours and textures. In our work, three different Se-enriched microgreens (kale, red cabbage and wheat) have been obtained with a noticeable concentration of total Se. Considering the importance of understanding the Se transformation into organic species through the microgreen’s metabolism pathways, we propose to perform Se speciation in these microgreens using an HPLC-MS method. In the present work, a CHIROBIOTIC T chromatographic column was used for enantio-resolution of seleno-amino acids (D- and L-selenomethionine, Se-methyl-L-selenocysteine, D- and L-selenocystine). The optimized conditions for the complete resolution of the analytes were achieved within 20 min by using a gradient elution starting with methanol/acetonitrile/water, 45:50:05 (v/v/v) with 0.1 % formic acid. The target analytes were finally identified and quantified by SIM. The method was applied to the microgreen’s samples with previous pretreatment by several washes with organic solvents, hydrolysis with formic acid at 37 °C for 24h and later SPE extraction. The results suggest that only L-selenocystine is present in the three plants and D- and L-selenomethionine are present in the wheat microgreens. The result will allow us to optimize the methodology to bring Se-functionalized microgreens-based food into the market to overcome the Se-deficiency.
