Abstract
Meat, fish, coffee, tea, mushroom, and spices are foods that have been acknowledged for their nutritional benefits but are also reportedly targets of fraud and tampering due to their economic value. Conventional methods often take precedence for monitoring these foods, but rapid advanced instruments employing molecular spectroscopic techniques are gradually claiming dominance due to their numerous advantages such as low cost, little to no sample preparation, and, above all, their ability to fingerprint and detect a deviation from quality. This review aims to provide a detailed overview of common molecular spectroscopic techniques and their use for agricultural and food quality management. Using multiple databases including ScienceDirect, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, 171 research publications including research articles, review papers, and book chapters were thoroughly reviewed and discussed to highlight new trends, accomplishments, challenges, and benefits of using molecular spectroscopic methods for studying food matrices. It was observed that Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), Infrared spectroscopy (IR), Hyperspectral imaging (his), and Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) stand out in particular for the identification of geographical origin, compositional analysis, authentication, and the detection of adulteration of meat, fish, coffee, tea, mushroom, and spices; however, the potential of UV/Vis, 1H-NMR, and Raman spectroscopy (RS) for similar purposes is not negligible. The methods rely heavily on preprocessing and chemometric methods, but their reliance on conventional reference data which can sometimes be unreliable, for quantitative analysis, is perhaps one of their dominant challenges. Nonetheless, the emergence of handheld versions of these techniques is an area that is continuously being explored for digitalized remote analysis.
Highlights
The above-listed publications clearly present the wide range of available spices, which are numerous by their varieties and available quality, and often targeted for food adulteration; molecular spectroscopic methods combined with chemometric techniques have been proven still very useful for their authentication
ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy (UV/Vis) and Raman spectroscopy (RS) techniques have been sparely applied in these areas, but their potential is not negligible
From this review, the different spectroscopic techniques have proven to be capable in the monitoring of geographical origin, compositional qualities, conditions of production, and conditions of storage for meat, fish, mushroom, spices, coffee, and tea
Summary
Publications focusing on food authentication have steadily increased in the past decade (Figure 1) In these reports, common methods for food authentication were high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), liquid chromatography (LC), proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS), matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS), and ambient mass spectrometry techniques such as direct analysis in real time (DART-MS) [2]. Common methods for food authentication were high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), liquid chromatography (LC), proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS), matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS), and ambient mass spectrometry techniques such as direct analysis in real time (DART-MS) [2] These methods have been very effective in food authentication, they require high technical expertise and can sometimes be expensive, in addition to the use of reagents and budgets for waste management. Molecular spectroscopic methods have been acknowledged for both smallscale and industry applications in the construction cosmetics, pharmaceutical, medical, veterinarian agricultural, and food industries but this review mainly focuses on their applications in the agricultural and food industries
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