Food characterization in the omics era: current advances, analytical approaches, and future perspectives
Food characterization is fundamental to ensuring food quality, safety, authenticity, traceability, and nutritional value in increasingly complex global food systems. Conventional analytical approaches often provide limited information on the molecular complexity of food matrices, necessitating the adoption of advanced, high-throughput technologies. Omics sciences, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, and microbiomics, have emerged as powerful tools for comprehensive food characterization by enabling the large-scale analysis of genes, transcripts, proteins, metabolites, lipids, and microbial communities. The integration of these disciplines within the framework of foodomics has transformed food research from conventional assessments to systems-level investigations of food composition, functionality, and biological effects. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the major omics platforms and their applications in food quality evaluation, authenticity verification, safety monitoring, traceability, and nutritional assessment. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of multi-omics approaches in identifying molecular biomarkers associated with food origin, processing, adulteration, and health-promoting attributes. Advances in analytical technologies, including high-resolution mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and next-generation sequencing, are discussed in the context of foodomics workflows. Furthermore, the integration of chemometrics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence with omics datasets is examined as a means of improving data interpretation, predictive modeling, and real-time decision-making throughout the food supply chain. The review also highlights current challenges related to data integration, standardization, analytical reproducibility, and bioinformatics infrastructure, while outlining emerging opportunities in precision nutrition, digital food systems, and sustainable food production. By synthesizing recent developments across multiple omics disciplines, this review underscores the pivotal role of foodomics and multi-omics strategies in advancing comprehensive food characterization and supporting the development of safer, more authentic, and nutritionally optimized food systems.