Abstract
Saffron is one of the most adulterated food products all over the world because of its high market prize. Therefore, a non-targeted approach based on the combination of headspace flash gas-chromatography with flame ionization detection (HS-GC-FID) and chemometrics was tested and evaluated to check adulteration of this spice with two of the principal plant-derived adulterants: turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) and marigold (Calendula officinalis L.). Chemometric models were carried out through both linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) from the gas-chromatographic data. These models were also validated by cross validation (CV) and external validation, which were performed by testing both models on pure spices and artificial mixtures capable of simulating adulterations of saffron with the two adulterants examined. These models gave back satisfactory results. Indeed, both models showed functional internal and external prediction ability. The achieved results point out that the method based on a combination of chemometrics with gas-chromatography may provide a rapid and low-cost screening method for the authentication of saffron.
Highlights
The commercial product named “Saffron Powder” is a powdered spice obtained by crushing the filaments of the Crocus sativus L. flower [1]
61 samples of commercial spices were analyzed by Heracles II flash HS-GC-flame ionization detectors (FIDs), which meant there were 244 objects or rows of the dataset matrices
It was evident that the discrimination of pure spices could be directly achieved by superimposing the GC chromatograms in Figure 1 without any need of chemometrics
Summary
The commercial product named “Saffron Powder” is a powdered spice obtained by crushing the filaments of the Crocus sativus L. flower [1]. Because of its high market price, this spice is one of the most often adulterated food products worldwide [2]. The high market price of saffron is due to the laborious process required to obtain the spice and the limited areas of production [4]. Galvin-King et al [6] report that the business volume concerning all herbs and spices is around four billion US dollars; economists soon expect growth up to 50%. The business volume of frauds is estimated to cause economic damage to the global food industry in the order of several tens of billions of US dollars [7]
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