Food Chemistry
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodchem
Analytical Methods
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: Fourier transform mid infrared (FT-MIR) spectroscopy combined with chemometrics techniques were
Received 12 July 2012 developed for classification and quantification of cheaper starches (potato and sweet potato starch) in
Received in revised form 11 December 2012 lotus root powder (LRP). By performing principal component analysis (PCA), it was possible to distinguish
Accepted 2 May 2013
between adulterated and non-adulterated LRP. The coefficient of determination (R2) and standard devi-
Available online 12 June 2013
ation ratio (SDR) of calibration set were found to be 0.9587–0.9898 and 3.63–10.2, depending on the pre-
treatment of spectra. The external validation set gave a coefficient of determination (R2) and standard
Keywords:
deviation ratio (SDR) of 0.9810 and 5.47, respectively. Moreover, the limit of detection (1%), the limit
Lotus root powder
Adulteration
of quantification (3%), reasonable recovery (92.3–101.5%), satisfactory intra-assay (2.9–5.5%) and inter-
Fourier transform mid-infrared assay (11.0–13.5%) precision illustrated the good performance of the present method. The results
Partial least squares obtained in this study indicate that FT-MIR spectroscopy can be used as an easy, rapid and novel tool
to detect the LRP adulterated with cheaper starches.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction MIR spectra (Liu, Chen, Dong, Ming, & Zhao, 2012). The modern
multivariate statistical techniques offer greater possibilities to
With the rapid development of the Chinese economy, the qual- analysis a very high number of data obtained using different ana-
ity of life and demand for healthy food have improved significantly. lytical techniques (De Luca et al., 2011). Partial least-squares
However, this has brought with an increase in unhealthy practises (PLS) regression, for advantages of simplicity and ease of use, is
in food processing. In recent years, authentication of foodstuff has one of the most widely used calibration models, which has proved
posed a major challenge for regulatory agencies. Labelling of prod- effective in improving model performance in the presence of
ucts in which high-cost ingredients are substituted for cheaper linearity (Blanco, Coello, Iturriaga, Maspoch, & Pages, 2000; Wold,
ones is a common practise in authentication of products (Rohman Sjostrom, & Eriksson, 2001).
& Che Man, 2011). Thus, to maintain the market order, regulatory The combination of IR and chemometric methods in food
bodies and food processors urgently need rapid methods of con- adulteration has attracted lots of interests in recent years. It is
firming the authenticity of foods. widely used in numerous foodstuff adulteration such as adulter-
Infrared (IR) spectroscopy as an emergent analytical technique ating honey with corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup and in-
has become a well-accepted method. It is environment-friendly verted sugar (Gallardo-Velázquez, Osorio-Revilla, Zuñiga-de Loa,
and does not demand complicated sample preparation procedure & Rivera-Espinoza, 2009); mango juice adulterated with sucrose
(De Luca et al., 2011). The fingerprints of functional groups in many (Jha & Gunasekaran, 2010); lard adulteration in cake, chocolate
compounds enable IR spectroscopy to be widely used in food and chocolate products (Che Man, Syahariza, Mirghani, Jinap, &
and pharmaceutical analysis (Bittnera et al., 2011). However, Bakar, 2005; Syahariza, Che Man, Selamat, & Bakar, 2005); soya
broad and overlapping absorption peaks (high dimensions and bean meal adulterated with melamine (Haughey, Graham,
complexity) make it complicated to do quantitative analysis with Cancouët, & Elliott, 2012); virgin coconut oil adulterated with
corn and sunflower oils (Rohman & Che Man, 2011); edible veg-
etable oil adulterated with used frying oil (Zhang et al., 2012);
⇑ Corresponding author. Address: College of Food Science, Southwest University,
extra virgin olive oil adulteration with edible and palm oils
#1 Tiansheng Road, Chongqing 400715, PR China. Tel.: +86 23 68 25 19 02; fax: +86
68 25 19 47.
(Maggio, Cerretani, Chiavaro, Kaufman, & Bendini, 2010; Rohman
E-mail address: zhaogh@swu.edu.cn (G. Zhao). and Che Man, 2010).
0308-8146/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2013.05.155
3104 J. Liu et al. / Food Chemistry 141 (2013) 3103–3109
Lotus root powder (LRP) is produced from lotus roots. It is 2.3.1. Calibration and prediction sets
known for helping to improve human health (Niu, Zhao, Jia, & Li, The range of adulterated LRP was covered from 0% to 100%. For
2012). Besides its main component of starch, LRP is rich in protein, the calibration set, the adulteration proportions were in 116 sam-
amino acids, reducing sugars, dietary fibre, minerals, beta-caro- ples set as 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 95% and
tene, and vitamins. Nowadays, LRP is commercially available in 100% (w/w). Each proportion in the calibration set from 10% to 95%
China and mainly consumed as breakfast and incorporated into was divided into three groups, including (1) LRP adulterated with
fast food and traditional confectionery as a functional ingredient potato starch; (2) LRP adulterated with sweet potato starch; (3)
(Man et al., 2012). Costs of LRP are high, making it prone to be LRP adulterated with equal amount of potato starch and sweet po-
adulterated with cheaper starches, such as potato starch and sweet tato starch. To prepare the samples for calibration, LRP from You-
potato starch in order to increase profits. The traditional methods lian Food Co., Ltd. was adulterated with potato starch form
to authenticate LRP are impractical due to their dependence on JingTian Agriculture Development Co., Ltd. and sweet potato starch
sensory and microscope and cannot quantify the adulterants. from Shuangxin Food Co., Ltd. For the validation set, the adultera-
Meanwhile, there is no information available on the use of IR com- tion proportions in 93 samples were set as 12%, 24%, 32%, 62%, 68%,
bined with chemometrics for detection and quantification of adul- 72%, 76%, 78%, 84%, 88% and 93% (w/w). Each proportion was also
terants in LRP. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to divided into three groups as described in the calibration set. To
investigate the feasibility of using Fourier transform mid-infrared perform an external validation, samples for validation were pre-
(MIR) spectroscopy as an alternative for quantitative analysis of pared with LRP from Chunxiangyuan Food Co., Ltd. and adulterated
LRP adulterated with potato starch and sweet potato starch. with potato starch form Shuangxin Food Co., Ltd. and sweet potato
starch from Jiaxian Food Co., Ltd. Additionally, the calibration set
and the external validation set were prepared by different mem-
2. Materials and methods bers of laboratory personnel.
Fig. 2. Two-D scores plots (A) and the loading plots (B) of PCA results for 116 samples by PC1 and PC2 (PC, principal component). (w) potato starch; () sweet potato starch;
(j) lotus root powder; (q) lotus root starch adulterated with potato starch; (}) lotus root powder adulterated with sweet potato starch; (4) lotus root powder adulterated
with potato starch and sweet potato starch.
ing in PC 1 was found around 900 cm1. While, negative loadings 3.3. Calibration and validation of the PLS procedure
on PC 2 were found between 1750 and 1250 cm1 and around
900 cm1. Bands around 900 cm1 may be due to skeletal stretch- 3.3.1. Optimization of calibration model
ing vibrations of starch which appear to be a major contributor of Results from the PCA analysis indicate that the obtained spectra
PC 1 and PC 2. could provide enough information to be used in developing models
J. Liu et al. / Food Chemistry 141 (2013) 3103–3109 3107
Fig. 3. RMSECV (root-mean-square error of cross-validation) and R2 (coefficient of determination) plotted as a function of the number of factors used in the PLS (partial least
squares) model.
Table 1
Results of calibration and validation of the PLS models on the raw spectra and spectra with various pretreatments.
Table 2
Analytical characteristics of the proposed method.
models in which 15 PLS factors had been introduced. Many studies potato starch. The raw spectra at frequencies of 500–4000 cm1
had optimised this number in order to create a reliable model (Al- were similar, with small differences in absorbance intensity among
Mbaideen & Benaissa, 2011; Mantanus et al., 2010). Fig.3 shows LRP, potato starch and sweet potato starch. However, the poor ana-
the RMSECV and R2 values plotted as a function of PLS factors for lytical differences in the IR spectra were amplified by applying the
determining adulteration in the LRP with first derivative (9 pts) derivative pre-treatment on the original data. The successful appli-
as the pre-processing technique. As seen from Fig. 3, RMSECV value cation of the optimal model proved the ability of the chemometric
decreases sharply with initial four PLS factors. However, RMSECV techniques applied on IR spectra for qualitative and quantitative
value remains relatively stable (3.56 to 2.47) from 4 to 15 PLS fac- determination of LRP adulterated potato and sweet potato starch.
tors. Thus, the optimal number of PLS factors was set as 4. The dis-advantages of the work reported here are still obvious
compared with traditional methods, for example, (1) sample pre-
3.3.2. External validation treatment before MIR spectra collection and calibration building
In order to verify the accuracy of the established PLS model, the is relatively complex; (2) MIR equipment is expensive.
external validation of the method was carried out with the valida-
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