Sustainable food metabolome: Discrimination of agroecological, organic, and conventional pinto beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) through the volatile organic compounds profile

Recently, the United Nations indicated the conventional agricultural system is unsustainable and could even threaten food security in the coming decades. Different sectors of society are employing efforts to promote sustainable agriculture, and the improvement of consumers awareness about this new class of food is a reality. Consequently, the evaluation of sustainable food composition has recently emerged. In the present study, a foodomics strategy was applied to discriminate pinto beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) cultivated by conventional, organic, and permaculture agriculture systems. For that purpose, headspace solid phase microextraction combined with gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (HS-SPME/GC-MS) and chemometrics were applied to analyze 36 samples. Permaculture beans presented the highest number of statistically significant annotated VOCs in comparison to the other cultivars. The main differential VOC class obtained was oxygenated terpenoids, which has potential to add value to the permaculture cultivated samples. Conventional and organic beans presented as major VOC classes aromatic compounds and alcohols, respectively.