DART-TOF (Metabolomic fingerprint) – General principle

Metabolomic is a new field of authenticity checking methods. It is based on the principle that the chemical compounds of sample could be used as a tracer of authenticity.

Those chemical compounds are often different in natural products and depend on the species and environmental conditions.

The potential of that technology has already been used to differ the taxonomic level of timber.

Furthermore, that possibility of timber verification has been combined with a new technology of rapid mass spectrometer measurement: DART-TOF-MS [Direct Analysis in Real Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometry, Cody and Laramée, 2005] which allows to analyse the chemical fingerprint of samples via a hot helium gas stream in ambient atmospheric condition.

Fortunately no preparation of the sample is required, only a fingernail size is enough for a measurement.

The result of the measurement is a chemical fingerprint based on low molecular molecules (<1000 daltons (atomic mass units), for example isoflavones, terpenes) indicative of the timber species.

Those metabolomic results can be presented easily as heatmaps to show the differences.

For sure, the rapid measurement of samples without preparation is highly interesting as it delivers the opportunity to establish a very effective analytical tool for timber species verification.

Therefore, the Wood Identification & Screening Center (USA) was founded and headquartered in Ashland to provide analysis for the law enforcement in US.

However, The DART-TOF technology for timber analysis is still relatively unknown in Europe. Therefore, Agroisolab has successfully started to offer that service in Europe and is using that technology to verify the species of timber.

That technology is regularly verified in international round robin tests to ensure the quality of the timber species evaluation.