Comparison of shelf-life appraisal techniques for the estimation of the limiting date of stability for agrifood reference materials

Abstract

Reference materials play a major role for the verification of the quality control of biological and chemical analysis. Due to the poor availability of certified reference materials, external reference materials (ERM) are intensively developing in complement and as a consequence of proficiency testing schemes (PTS). However, the use of any reference material must be time-limited, whereas the assigned reference value may change with time and it is under the responsibility of the material producer to indicate the date until this can be used for calibration purpose with some guarantee. This article compares different methods used to determine the limiting date of stability (LDS) in food and food-related reference materials, using some specific analytes (moisture, protein and oil contents) as stability-monitoring analytes. LDS is defined as the moment when the assigned values of one or several analytes can no longer be guaranteed by the producer. For most of the ERMs used as examples (i.e., rapeseed, bread wheat, durum wheat) the calculated periods of stability were longer than the present storage times used in BIPEA. However, for sunflower, the rapid degradation of the monitoring analytes indicates a shorter time than forecast.