Authentication of nine poultry species using high-performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry

The fraudulent substitution of high-quality with lower priced poultry meat is quite conceivable and consumers' concerns have been reported previously. A reliable authentication of the poultry species is required to control specifications. Consequently, an HPLC-MS/MS method for the simultaneous detection of chicken, duck, goose, guinea fowl, ostrich, pheasant, pigeon, quail and turkey in raw and heated meat was developed. Potential marker peptides were identified by a shotgun proteomic approach (HPLC-QToF-MS/MS) after protein extraction followed by tryptic digestion, testing different conditions for extraction in order to extract a broad spectrum of proteins from each species. The final twenty-eight marker peptides selected, which are specific for one of the nine targeted species each, and one common turkey/chicken peptide were measured by multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) using an optimized extraction protocol. To the best of our knowledge, twenty-three of these marker peptides have not been reported previously. The suitability of the marker peptides was verified by the analysis of 42 different poultry samples from the nine species included in this study. All twenty-nine marker peptides were heat stable.