Tag Archives: chemometrics

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Fraud Is the Spice Of Life

By Susanne Kuehne
No Comments
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud, cumin
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne.

The high value of spices makes them one of the most popular targets for intentional adulteration. Researchers in Brazil developed an efficient method for fraud detection: Near-infrared spectrometer (NIR) associated with chemometrics. This method is able to detect adulterants like corn flour and cassava in spice samples, revealing a high rate of adulteration, between 62% for commercial black pepper and 79% for cumin samples.

Resource

  1. Amanda Beatriz Sales de Lima et al. (January 2020). “Fast quantitative detection of black pepper and cumin adulterations by near-infrared spectroscopy and multivariate modeling”. Food Control. Vol. 107.
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Separating the Wheat From the Chaff

By Susanne Kuehne
No Comments
Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food fraud, Argentina, durim wheat
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database.
Image credit: Susanne Kuehne.

Pasta is widely consumed around the world, and prices have increased because people have been stockpiling it during the COVID-19 pandemic. Durum wheat, the basic wheat for pasta, is the second most cultivated wheat around the world after common bread wheat, claiming 15–30% higher prices, and therefore an attractive target for food fraud. Out of 150 Argentinian pasta samples that were analyzed with a new method based on Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), in combination with Partial-Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), 112 were found to be altered with common wheat. Argentinian labeling law requires durum wheat pasta to be based on 100% durum wheat.

Resource

  1. De Girolamo, A., et.al. (June 2020). “Detection of durum wheat pasta adulteration with common wheat by infrared spectroscopy and chemometrics: A case study”  LWT. Vol. 127. Elsevier.