Integrating synbiotic fermentation and iron fortification: untargeted LC-HRMS metabolomic characterization of a functional Spondias dulcis L. beverage
摘要
Iron deficiency anemia remains one of the most prevalent nutritional disorders worldwide, and conventional iron supplementation often suffers from poor bioavailability and undesirable sensory effects. Integrating iron fortification with synbiotic fermentation offers a promising alternative by improving iron solubility and stability through microbial activity and organic acid production. Despite the growing interest in functional beverages, studies combining synbiotic fermentation and iron fortification in tropical fruit matrices such as Spondias dulcis L. remain limited. This study aimed to characterize the metabolomic profile of an iron-fortified, non-dairy synbiotic beverage derived from Spondias dulcis L. using an untargeted Liquid Chromatography-High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (LC-HRMS) approach integrated with multivariate statistical analysis. The analysis revealed distinct differences in metabolomic composition between fermented and non-fermented formulations. Multivariate analyses, including PCA, PLS-DA, and volcano plot evaluation, demonstrated clear clustering patterns, with key discriminant metabolite features tentatively assigned to phenolic acids, organic acids, and bioactive peptides associated with antioxidant-related metabolite features and iron-associated metabolic pathways. These findings demonstrate that the integration of synbiotic fermentation and iron fortification suggests interactions between microbial activity and iron that may influence metabolite composition within the beverage matrix. Collectively, the metabolomic data provide a basis for future studies on plant-based beverage development derived from tropical fruits.