Recent advances and applications in LC-HRMS for food and plant natural products: a critical review.

In the last decade, interest in food and plant natural products (FPNPs) has been growing due to their medical applications. Liquid chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) is the key to obtaining pure natural products for structure elucidation as well as for development into therapeutic agents. In this review, we will provide a summary of recent advances and applications related to the analysis of the most common FPNPs in studied matrices, in particular, polyphenols, peptides, carotenoids, alkaloids, terpenoids and glucosinolates by LC-HRMS. This paper also reviews the critical revision of this topic covering the works published in the last 4 years (early 2016-mid 2019). In addition, it gives an overview of the current state of various screening strategies (e.g. targeted, suspected, untargeted or retrospective) with discussion on future directions and perspectives of this technique. Graphical abstract.