Biogenic amines and polyamines in wines: Does Dekkera/Brettanomyces red wine spoilage increases the risk of intake by consumers?

Exploring factors influencing the levels of biogenic amines in wine and microbiological strategies for controlling their occurrence in winemaking

Fermented beverages, including wine, can accumulate high concentrations of biogenic amines (BAs), which can pose potential health risks. BAs are produced by various yeasts and lactic acid bacteria (LAB) during winemaking. LAB are the main contributors to the formation of histamine and tyramine, the most toxic and food safety relevant biogenic amines. Numerous factors, ranging from agricultural and oenological practices to sanitation conditions, can contribute to the formation of BAs in wines. Moreover, organic and biodynamic wines impose limitations on the use of common food additives employed to control the proliferation of native and spoilage microorganisms during vinification and storage. To mitigate histamine production, commercial starter cultures incapable of synthesising histamine have been effectively utilised to reduce wine histamine content. Alternative fermentative microorganisms are currently under investigation to enhance the safety, quality, and typicity of wines, including indigenous LAB, non-Saccharomyces yeasts, and BAs degrading strains. Furthermore, exploration of extracts from BAs-degrading microorganisms and their purified enzymes has been undertaken to reduce BAs levels in wines. This review highlights microbial contributors to BAs in wines, factors affecting their growth and BA production, and alternative microorganisms that can degrade or avoid BAs. The aim is to lessen reliance on additives, providing consumers with safer wine choices.

The selective extraction of dietary polyamines from chicken breast using the application of a lab-on-a-chip electromembrane and dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction followed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

Excessive dietary polyamines (PAs), including putrescine (PUT), spermine (SPM), and spermidine (SPD), have become a worldwide concern due to their carcinogenicity and reduced shelf life. A modern miniaturized on-chip electromembrane extraction (EME) has been applied to extract these compounds from chicken breast samples. This method is based fundamentally on ionic compounds' electrostatic attraction, diffusion, and solubility in the acceptor phase. The chemical structure of polyamines enables their efficient extraction using an electric driving force on a microchip device. HCl solution (0.1 mol L-1) was applied as an aqueous acceptor solvent. Dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction was performed after EME to facilitate joining three-phase EME to GC-MS and improve the merit figures. The total ranges of 3.77-7.89 μg g-1, 3.48-7.02 μg g-1, and 0.78-2.20 μg g-1 were acquired as PUT, SPM and SPD concentrations in chicken breast, respectively. The results demonstrate that the level of PAs in fresh chicken breast samples is not concerning, but it may reduce the quality of chicken meat over time. This novel analytical technique has several advantages: high recovery, substantial quickness, remarkable selectivity, and good enrichment factors. This emerging method could be generalized to other studies to analyze different foodstuffs.

The Selection of the Best Derivatization Reagents for the Determination of Polyamines in Home-Made Wine Samples

The procedures of putrescine, spermine, spermidine, and cadaverine derivatization using 2-chloro-1,3-dinitro-5-(trifluoromethyl)benzene, 1-fluoro-2-nitro-4-(trifluoromethyl) benzene, and 3,5-bis-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl isothiocyanate for chromatographic determination in home-made wine samples are compared in the present study. The procedures discussed were compared regarding simplicity, linearity, precision, and accuracy. The polyamines derivatives were isolated and characterized by X-ray crystallography and ¹H, ¹³C, and ¹⁹F NMR spectroscopy. The obtained structures of aliphatic amines showed that all amino groups, four in spermine, two in putrescine and cadaverine, and three in spermidine, regardless of the applied reagent, were substituted. The applicability of the described procedures was tested during the chromatographic analysis of the compounds' content in home-made wines. For this purpose, a simple and environmentally friendly sample preparation procedure was developed. The obtained results present the derivatization of polyamines with 1-fluoro-2-nitro-4-(trifluoromethyl)benzene as a better choice for the determination of these compounds in food samples.

Update on Biogenic Amines in Fermented and Non-Fermented Beverages

The formation of biogenic amines in food and beverages is mainly due to the presence of proteins and/or free amino acids that represent the substrates for microbial or natural enzymes with decarboxylation or amination activity. Fermentation occurring in many alcoholic beverages, such as wine, beer, cider, liqueurs, as well as coffee and tea, is one of the main processes affecting their production. Some biogenic amines can also be naturally present in some fruit juices or fruit-based drinks. The dietary intake of such compounds should consider all their potential sources by both foods and drinks, taking in account the health impact on some consumers that represent categories at risk for a deficient metabolic activity or assuming inhibiting drugs. The most important tool to avoid their adverse effects is based on prevention through the selection of lactic acid bacteria with low decarboxylating activity or good manufacturing practices hurdling the favoring conditions on biogenic amines' production.

Safety Evaluation of Yeasts With Probiotic Potential

This work has evaluated the safety aspects of 20 yeast strains, isolated from food environments, selected in previous works due to their probiotic potential. Among the different strains, there are Saccharomyces and non-Saccharomyces yeasts. Before safety evaluation, differentiation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains was done by PCR amplification of inter-δ region with pairs of primers δ2-12 and δ12-21, which showed that they were all different from each other and also had different profiles to Saccharomyces boulardii (the only commercial probiotic yeast). The non-Saccharomyces ones were already known. The evaluation tests carried out were antibiotic and antifungal resistance, production of biogenic amines, deconjugation activity of bile salts, and different enzymatic activities: coagulase, deoxyribonuclease, hemolysin, proteolytic, and phospholipase. None of the studied strains demonstrated coagulase, hemolytic or DNase capacity (clear virulence factors), although all of them showed protease activity, some showed phospholipase activity, and half of the yeasts were capable of conjugating bile salts. Regarding antimicrobial compounds, all were resistant to antibiotics but showed sensitivity to the antimycotics used. Nevertheless, only one strain of Hanseniaspora osmophila was excluded for use in the food industry, due to its high production of tyramine.

Deep insights into fungal diversity in traditional Chinese sour soup by Illumina MiSeq sequencing

Sour soup is a traditional condiment in Guizhou Province, China. The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in the fungi present in 5 types of sour soup (tomato sour soup, chili sour soup, cherry tomato sour soup, spoiled tomato sour soup, and red sour soup made from blended tomato and chili sour soup subjected to secondary fermentation) and to determine the reasons for the deterioration of tomato sour soup by comparing the fungal communities in normal and deterioratedtomato sour soup. A total of 5 phyla were detected in all 5 samples, including Ascomycota (69.38%), Basidiomycota (7.63%), Zygomycota (1.59%), Chytridiomycota (0.01%) and unclassified phyla (21.39%). Ascomycota was the main phylum in each sample except the red sour soup made from blended tomato and chili sour soup subjected to secondary fermentation. That sour soup contained many unrecognized phyla. At the genus level, there were major differences among the different samples. Dekkera spp. and Pichia spp. were the main dominant fungus in tomato sour soup, Saccharomyces spp. and Pichia spp. were the dominant fungus in chili sour soup, and Pichia spp. were the dominant fungus in cherry tomato sour soup. When sour soup went bad, the fungus of sour soup changed greatly, and the unknown fungal genera, Cladospora spp., Saccharomyces spp. and Emericella spp. became the dominant fungal genera. In addition, after the secondary fermentation of tomato and chili sour soup mixed with garlic and ginger, the fungal genera of the base fermentation were replaced by unknown fungal genera. Moreover, there were various spoilage fungi in sour soup, which indicated that there were safety risks in naturally fermented sour soup and should be further controlled. This study revealed the fungal flora in sour soup made from different vegetables and compared the fungal diversity of spoiled and normal tomato sour soup and thereby provided a basis for understanding the fungal diversity of sour soup in China and guiding the production of sour soup.

New molecularly imprinted polymers for reducing negative volatile phenols in red wine with low impact on wine colour

4-Ethylphenol (4-EP) and 4-ethylguaiacol (4-EG) formation in red wines by Dekkera/Brettanomyces yeasts reduce significantly wine consumer's acceptability. Polymers with specific adsorption for volatile phenols (VPs) could be a valuable tool for wine producers for removing this negative sensory defect. In this work, a new molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) was synthesised using ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EDMA) as cross-linker and ethylene glycol methyl ether acrylate as functional monomers. Although there was observed a competitive binding of the more abundant structurally related phenolic compounds of the wine matrix, it was still able to reduce 38 to 63% the wine VPs, depending on the wine VPs levels, presenting higher performance than the respective non-imprinted polymers (NIP). Sensory analysis of the MIP treated wine resulted in a significant decrease in the phenolic attribute and significant increase of the fruity and floral attributes, with no significant differences in the wine colour perceived by the expert panel. The sensory improvement of the MIP was significantly higher than that observed for the correspondent NIP.

Chemical hazards in grapes and wine, climate change and challenges to face

Climate change has an impact on the chemical risks associated to wine consumption related with grape development and microbial contamination. We can classify chemical hazards in wine into two groups: those present in grapes due to agricultural practices, environmental contamination or fungal growth and those coming from fermentation and the winemaking process. The first group includes mycotoxins, whilst the second encompasses ethyl carbamate, biogenic amines, sulfur dioxide and proteins used as technological ingredients such as fining material. Usually the effective control of chemical hazards is achieved by assuring that they either are minimized or absent in the final product since their removal is somewhat difficult and sometimes it may affect sensory properties, which is a major issue in wine. Interestingly, it is possible to give recommendations to avoid excess of these compounds, but more research is needed to face future challenges related to climate change and consumer demands.