Miniaturized NIR spectroscopy and chemometrics: A smart combination to solve food authentication challenges

Abstract

Over the years, technology has allowed more accurate, more effective, and prompt food integrity assessments to assure the quality and authenticity of food material. Thanks to the development of portable and hand-held near infrared (NIR) as a rapid, reliable, non-destructive, and user-friendly instrument, on-site food analysis is provided with more feasibility. However, miniaturized NIR devices have some significant challenges due to the presence of varying noise resources which can lead to misinterpretation. In this context, chemometric methods with the capability of resolution, identification, classification, and calibration play a pivotal role in achieving precise and in-depth comprehension of the data. In the present mini-review, we will discuss miniaturized NIR instrumentation, some chemometric concepts, and introduce the most popular algorithm in food authentication problem. The main feature of this review is avoiding mathematical details as much as possible to make the material accessible to a broad audience but highlighting the key features of chemometric methods with some simple illustrative examples in the scope of food authenticity.

Spectral sensing in the near-infrared and chemometrics for flour quality multi-analysis

“…Optical spectroscopy emerges as a potent analytical method applicable to flour quality assessment, owing to its nondestructive attributes, rapidity, and capability to concurrently analyze multiple components 1 . Within the wide offer of spectroscopic techniques, near-infrared spectroscopy particularly stands out for its efficacy in determining flour quality, including the possibility of detecting adulteration 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 .…”

Analysis of Polyphenol Patterns of Pleurotus ostreatus Cultivars by UHPLC-ESI-MS/MS; Application of FT-NIR and Chemometric Methods, Classification Options

“…The widespread use of near-infrared spectroscopy as an environmentally friendly, non-destructive "green" technique in agriculture is unquestionable. In combination with modern chemometric methods, nowadays it has become one of the key areas of analytical practice for the determination of nutritional parameters and the detection of adulteration [20].…”

Optrode-Assisted Multiparametric Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for the Analysis of Liquids

“…Also, NIR spectral features are often masked by a complex baseline due to the matrix in which the target components are dissolved. For these reasons, calibrating NIRS spectra against primary standards in simple solutions is almost impossible, and quantitative NIR spectrochemical analysis relies primarily on the use of large calibration sets and chemometric algorithms [9,10]. These algorithms are based on multivariate analysis: they perform a similarity search of the spectral absorption patterns in many-dimensional space.…”