Spices have an important impact on daily aliment. Changes of their quality resulting in far reaching consequences in different foodstuffs and imply financial losing and even health hazard. In this study it is demonstrated that application of two different portable multi gas sensors (electronic nose and ion mobility spectrometer) supported by multivariate data analysis can contribute to ensure quality control of spice mixtures and to find out product adulteration. Headspace above spice mixtures for sausages and saveloy and product counterfeitings was investigated by a metal oxide based electronic nose (e-nose of KAMINA-type). Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) of sensor resistivity data was performed for differentiation. Simultaneously an ion mobility spectrometer (IMS) was coupled to the emission chamber for detection of gaseous components above spice mixtures. The measured spectra show differences between the two spice mixtures and were discussed using a principal component analysis (PCA). The two multigas sensors permit discrimination between the types of spice mixtures and can indicate product adulteration. Additionally, a headspace gas analysis by gas chromatography was performed to identify the main volatile components and to prove the chemical basis for the observed differences of the multi gas sensors.
Application of electronic nose and ion mobility spectrometer to quality control of spice mixtures
(2009)
The detection of the aroma and flavour volatile compounds of spices is key in product quality control. Accordingly, it is necessary to develop new electronic sensing systems for food adulteration control and authenticity assessment for protecting customer's health.
In this work, the capability of the E-nose and VE-tongue in combination with SPME-GC-MS to correctly discriminate between several cumin samples of different geographical origins and to detect their adulteration, by using unsupervised and supervised chemometric tools, was evaluated. Regarding the aroma profile, eleven volatile compounds were characterized by SPME-GC-MS; all of them were found in cumin powder while only eight are found in cumin seeds. The main volatile compounds detected were b-pinene, m-cymene, g-terpinene, cuminaldehyde and cuminic alcohol, in different proportions depending on the cumin sample form (seed or powder). In summary, the results obtained are sufficiently encouraging as a starting point for the development of new electronic sensing systems with more improvement in the reliability of the sensor's performance as well as chemometric tools in order to deal with a complex dataset.
Different electronic sensor systems coupled with multivariate data analysis were applied to characterize and classify seven saffron samples and to verify their declared geographical origin. The proposed electronic sensing consists of a low-cost electronic nose (E-nose) based on metal oxide semiconductor sensors and a voltammetric electronic tongue (VE-tongue) based on voltammetric sensors. The ability of multivariable analysis methods such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) and Support Vector Machines (SVMs) to classify the saffron samples according to their geographical origin have been investigated. Both PCA and HCA have shown an overlapping of E-nose responses. Moreover, the SVM analysis of the E-nose database reached a 66.07% success rate in the recognition of the saffron sample odour. On the other hand, good discrimination has been reached using PCA and HCA in the VE-tongue characterization case, besides a 100% accuracy in the saffron flavour recognition was attained. To validate the proposed electronic sensing systems, analytical chemical methods such as SPME-GC-MS and UV-Vis spectrophotometry were used. These analytical methods could be helpful tools to identify the composition of volatile compounds of the analysed saffron samples. Moreover, UV-Vis spectrophotometry was also used to determine the non-volatile profile of the samples from different geographic origins. It is demonstrated that the electronic sensing systems' findings are in a satisfactory correlation with the analytical methods. In the light of these results, we might say that the electronic systems offer a fast, simple and efficient tool to recognize the declared geographical origin of the saffron samples.