16 - Effective Use of Food Traceability in Cereal Grain Food Supply Chains

Abstract

Cereal grain, as the most important staple food crop, is vital for almost all of the world's population, while the phenomenon of passing off the cheaper cereal grain as the more expensive one or adding inferior cereal grain to a premium one has always been in the cereal grain market, resulting in extremely widespread adulteration or mislabeling of cereal grain. Recently, several different analytical techniques, for example, Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (IRMS), Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS), Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIR), and so on, have been well adopted in geographical origin traceability of cereal grain. In this chapter, IRMS, IR, and multielement analysis in the geographical origin traceability of cereal grain are discussed and summarized. The results indicate that these techniques could potentially be the effective uses in the geographical origin traceability of cereal grain.