In the food industries, a rising problem is identifying the origin of food products (food authentication). Also on the increase is food adulteration. Presented in this communication is the new process spatial angular merit (orthogonal projection analysis (OPA)) to classifying samples into known categories. The process is general and two food applications are reported: (1) food authentication and (2) identification and quantitation of food adulterants. Specifically, the food authentication issue involves �Fava Santorinis�, a protected designation of origin (PDO) yellow split pea species growing only on the island of Santorini in Greece. Due to its nutritional quality and taste, it has gained a high monetary value. In order to discriminate Fava Santorinis from other yellow split peas, four classification methods utilizing rare earth elements (REEs) compositional analysis results fused with trace elements quantitative values are studied. The four classification processes are OPA, Mahalanobis distance (MD), partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS DA) and k nearest neighbors (KNN). Overall, the OPA method was found to perform best with up to 100 % accuracy using the fused data. The food adulterant identification challenge encompasses a series of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) samples adulterated with six different eatable food oil products. Using fluorescence spectra of these samples, OPA, MD, and KNN are compared with OPA performing best. Lastly, a new quantitative analysis method not requiring reference samples is performed for the adulterants in the EVOO samples. In the approach presented using fluorescence spectroscopy, a pure component spectrum of the analyte (adulterant sun flower oil) and blanks (EVOO samples) are used to form the model. Validation prediction errors from the new approach are comparable to those from a model built with reference samples. Since no reference samples are needed, this approach is valuable for reducing both the time and cost of model building.

Identifying authentic and/or adulterated food products followed by adulterant quantitation without reference samples: Application to Fava Santorinis and extra virgin olive oil

248th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.