A strategy of untargeted foodomics profiling for dynamic changes during Fu brick tea fermentation using ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry.

During a microbial fermentation process, the chemical composition of Fu brick tea changed substantially. To better profile the unique changes of metabolites and lipids in Fu brick tea at different fermentation stages, a multifaceted strategy combining untargeted foodomics with UHPLC-Q-Orbitrap analysis was developed. The discriminative tea metabolites and lipids were determined by statistical analysis and online database matching. A total of 12 characteristic components (3 metabolic and 9 lipid variables) were found to differ significantly among samples. Quantitative analysis showed that, except for trimyristin and incensole acetate, the content of these compounds gradually increased and finally stabilized with increasing fermentation time. The simultaneous determination of metabolites and lipids in this study provided detailed information for the analysis of multi-component changes in a complex matrix.