An overview is given on the activities in metabolic screening in food, agricultural applications and clinical/translational research.
In food a standardized platform, the FoodScreener is offered, on which modules for juice and wine are offered. Soon another module will be released for honey quality control. It is shown how the sample numbers are increasing every year with the help of our collaboration partners, such allowing more parameters per matrix and better specificity and sensitivity of the models. Honey came into the focus in 2014 due to substantial fraud especially in adding sugar sirup of different kind, so far undetected by conventional analysis. Once the pollen in honey are removed, conventional analysis has no means to identify geographical origin or type of honey.
It is shown, how the statistical routines developed in food and clinical can be transferred to agricultural questions as addressed in the EU-project AGROCOS. For the plant Isatis Tinctoria (to produce colorant) it is demonstrated how cultivars can be differentiated, the best harvesting time and multiple harvesting effects on the plant be identified.
In addition the use of NMR in Taxonomy is explained on one example predicting plant family membership.
In the last part the development of inborn error screening is demonstrated on the example Turkey and how this can enter into a comprehensive neonatology screening by NMR. Typical problems in neonatology are named and an outlook for the future is given, how this can be accessed by NMR. Based on recent information of UNESCO there are annually 4 Million
Babies and young children dying of sudden infant death, assuming a large dark figure. Every support in finding tools to prevent this outcome is highly welcome. Knowing that many other problems exist, there is a high pressure in the health system and in the future NMR can provide solutions.
