Untargeted chromatographic methods coupled with chemometric strategies for the analysis of food and related samples

Due to the increasing interest in understanding the complexity of food chemistry and the change in the quality control paradigm for food products, not only a limited number of analytes are considered for analysis, and a more holistic approach is now required for assessing quality in a larger sense. Certainly, the improvement of chromatographic techniques, such as the hyphenation to high resolution mass spectrometry and comprehensive multidimensional chromatography, has played a central role in this transition. However, to fully exploit these technologies, the large amount of data that can be obtained needs to be processed in a robust manner. Therefore, chemometric approaches have become a must for the appropriate use of these techniques in the food analysis field. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of ready-to-use commercial software to process the data obtained in this type of analysis, mostly thanks to the increased interest in the extensive capacities of multidimensional chromatography. Nevertheless, the selection of the right data treatment methods remains an open topic, where new strategies are constantly arising to further develop the foodomic field. This review article provides a critical overview of the main data treatment techniques to fully exploit the chromatographic analysis in the field of foodomics. Different chemometric strategies are presented and discussed based on the current trends (last 7 years) in the subject. Moreover, a revision of recent applications where these techniques were fully exploited is included as examples of the growing interest in this area, hoping to inspire further research in the foodomic area.