Abstract
Coffee, one of the most popular drinks around the world, is also one of the beverages most susceptible of being adulterated. Untargeted high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet and fluorescence detection (HPLC-UV-FLD) fingerprinting strategies in combination with chemometrics were employed for the authenticity assessment and fraud quantitation of adulterated coffees involving three different and common adulterants: chicory, barley, and flours. The methodologies were applied after a solid–liquid extraction procedure with a methanol:water 50:50 (v/v) solution as extracting solvent. Chromatographic fingerprints were obtained using a Kinetex® C18 reversed-phase column under gradient elution conditions using 0.1% formic acid aqueous solution and methanol as mobile phase components. The obtained coffee and adulterants extract HPLC-UV-FLD fingerprints were evaluated by partial least squares regression-discriminants analysis (PLS-DA) resulting to be excellent chemical descriptors for sample discrimination. One hundred percent classification rates for both PLS-DA calibration and prediction models were obtained. In addition, Arabica and Robusta coffee samples were adulterated with chicory, barley, and flours, and the obtained HPLC-UV-FLD fingerprints subjected to partial least squares (PLS) regression, demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed methodologies to assess coffee authenticity and to quantify adulteration levels (down to 15%), showing both calibration and prediction errors below 1.3% and 2.4%, respectively.
Highlights
Coffee, one of the most popular drinks around the world, is one of the beverages most susceptible of being adulterated
In the present contribution, untargeted high-perform ance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-UV and HPLC-fluorescence detection (FLD) fingerprints will be exploited as sample chemical descriptors to assess coffee authenticity and to quantify adulteration levels when chicory, barley, and different flours are used as coffee adulterants
In previous works [14,15,20], we have demonstrated that HPLC-UV and HPLC-FLD
Summary
One of the most popular drinks around the world, is one of the beverages most susceptible of being adulterated. Untargeted high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet and fluorescence detection (HPLC-UV-FLD) fingerprinting strategies in combination with chemometrics were employed for the authenticity assessment and fraud quantitation of adulterated coffees involving three different and common adulterants: chicory, barley, and flours. HPLC-UV-FLD fingerprints were evaluated by partial least squares regression-discriminants analysis (PLS-DA) resulting to be excellent chemical descriptors for sample discrimination. Arabica and Robusta coffee samples were adulterated with chicory, barley, and flours, and the obtained HPLC-UV-FLD fingerprints subjected to partial least squares (PLS) regression, demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed methodologies to assess coffee authenticity and to quantify adulteration levels (down to 15%), showing both calibration and prediction errors below. Considering coffee beneficial effects and their great popularity, the market niche becomes more competitive and, the economic cut of the coffee production published maps and institutional affiliations
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