Investigating the Origin of Tomatoes and Triple Concentrated Tomato Pastes through Multielement Determination by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry and Statistical Analysis

Abstract

The concentration of 32 elements (Al, As, Ba, Be, Ca, Cd, Ce, Cu, Dy, Fe, K, La, Lu, Mg, Mn, Na, Nd, Pb, Rb, Sm, Sr, Th, U, V, Zn) was determined in tomatoes harvested in different four Italian regions and in triple concentrated tomato paste samples coming from Italy, China, Greece and California. The resulting multielement profiles were processed using three chemometric techniques to evaluate the possibility of discrimination between different cultivation areas. The closed-vessel microwave digested samples were diluted and analyzed by DRC-ICP-MS with CH(4) as reaction gas. The accuracy of the proposed method was considered acceptable (values in the range 75-120%) for 25 out of the 35 elements of the reference material NCS ZC85006 Tomato. The origin of tomato fruits and the areas of production as "Italy" and "non-Italy" of the triple concentrated pastes were evaluated by three supervised pattern recognition procedures, linear discriminant analysis (LDA), soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA) and K-nearest neighbors (KNN).

Multivariate class modeling techniques applied to multielement analysis for the verification of the geographical origin of chili pepper

“…The selection of variables by S-LDA shows that alkaline metals and alkaline earth metals (Na, Rb, Cs, Mg, Ca, Sr) are among the most discriminating elements. This result is in agreement with the outcomes of other paper published by our research team on the traceability of olive oil (Benincasa et al, 2007), tomatoes (Lo Feudo et al, 2010), Tropea red onions (Furia et al, 2011), and clementines (Benabdelkamel et al, 2012).…”

“…The 46 elements investigated were 7 Li, 9 Be, 23 Na, 24 It is known that the assay of some of these elements by ICP-MS can be affected by polyatomic isobaric interferences. We demonstrated that the dynamic reaction cell (DRC) is an efficient strategy for minimizing some isobaric interferences in different food matrices (Benabdelkamel et al, 2012;Benincasa et al, 2007;Furia et al, 2011;Lo Feudo et al, 2010). In particular, in the assay of iron, chromium and nichel the DRC is able to reduce significantly the signal of the interfering polyatomic species affecting the reliability of analysis.…”

“…The multielemental profile is among the most used approach in food authentication (Gonzalvez, Armenta, & de la Guardia, 2009;Kelly, Heaton, & Hoogewerff, 2005). Our research group used this analytical strategy for the geographical identification of olive oil, tomato, onion, clementine and for the detection of buffalo milk adulteration (Benabdelkamel et al, 2012;Benincasa, Lewis, Perri, Sindona, & Tagarelli, 2007;Benincasa, Lewis, Sindona, & Tagarelli, 2008;Furia, Naccarato, Sindona, Stabile, & Tagarelli, 2011;Lo Feudo, Naccarato, Sindona, & Tagarelli, 2010).…”

The volatile fraction profiling of fresh tomatoes and triple concentrate tomato pastes as parameter for the determination of geographical origin

“…In particular, two studies were dealing with the determination of geographical origin of cherry tomatoes (Sequi, Dell'Abate, & Valentini, 2007) and triple concentrated tomato pastes (Consonni, Cagliani, Stocchero, & Porretta, 2009) by 1 H-NMR spectroscopy. Moreover, our research group has demonstrated that the multi element profiling obtain using ICP-MS followed by a suitable statistical treatment of data can be successfully used in this type of investigation (Lo Feudo et al, 2010). Moreover, in a previous studies we have demonstrated that volatile components can be used to differentiate various virgin olive oil obtained from different cultivar (Benincasa et al, 2003) and to establish the geographical origin of olive oil (Cavaliere et al, 2007).…”

Effects of bedrock on the chemical and Sr isotopic compositions of plants

“…The chemical composition of soils is primarily affected by the source rocks and the types of weathering processes. Therefore, the material cycles through the source rock-soil-plant system are the principle underlying the geographical discrimination used for agricultural, forestry, and food products, based on multi-element composition (Almeida and Vasconcelos 2003;Suzuki et al 2008;Lo Feudo et al 2010;Furia et al 2011). For example, Almeida and Vasconcelos (2003) investigated the relationship between wines and their provenance soils using multi-element composition, and concluded that soil composition has potential for use as a fingerprint of the origin of wines.…”