Acquisition of Mass Spectrometry Data of Carotenoids: A Focus on Big Data Management.

Accurate determination of carotenoid profile in plant tissues and food samples requires the application of hyphenated analytical resources including HPLC with high-resolution hybrid mass spectrometers. The high analytical power of modern MS equipment means the generation of Big Data resulting from the independent and complementary physicochemical properties of the target compounds that requires a complex processing to unravel the results. The present protocol describes a complete pipeline methodology for high-throughput analysis of carotenoids based on mass spectrometry (MS). After an exhaustive extraction, the workflow includes the acquisition of HPLC-hr-MS and MS ² spectra assisted step by step by specific post-processing software.