Abstract
Chemometric methods using mid-FTIR spectroscopy were developed in order to reduce the time of study of melamine and cyanuric acid in infant formulas. Chemometric models were constructed using the algorithms Partial Least Squares (PLS1, PLS2) and Principal Component Regression (PCR) in order to correlate the IR signal with the levels of melamine or cyanuric acid in the infant formula samples. Results showed that the best correlations were obtained using PLS1 (R2: 0.9998, SEC: 0.0793, and SEP: 0.5545 for melamine and R2: 0.9997, SEC: 0.1074, and SEP: 0.5021 for cyanuric acid). Also, the SIMCA model was studied to distinguish between adulterated formulas and nonadulterated samples, giving optimum discrimination and good interclass distances between samples. Results showed that chemometric models demonstrated a good predictive ability of melamine and cyanuric acid concentrations in infant formulas, showing that this is a rapid and accurate technique to be used in the identification and quantification of these adulterants in infant formulas.
Highlights
Many foods have the potential for being adulterated naturally or deliberately
Melamine has been dishonestly added to dairy products (such as milk and infant formula) by dishonest milk producers to gain an incorrectly higher readout of apparent protein content than that determined by the conventional standard Kjeldahl test [2]
The objective of this work is to evaluate the ability of midFTIR combined with chemometrics to detect and quantify melamine and cyanuric acid in infant formula powders
Summary
Melamine (2,4,6-triamino-1,3,5-triazine) is used for the production of multipurpose melamine-formaldehyde resins and has high nitrogen content (≈66% by mass). Melamine has been dishonestly added to dairy products (such as milk (liquid or powder) and infant formula) by dishonest milk producers to gain an incorrectly higher readout of apparent protein content than that determined by the conventional standard Kjeldahl test [2]. This action has been a cause of severe illnesses and numerous infants have been intoxicated because the addition of melamine into food products can cause death [3]. Its structural analogue, cyanuric acid (2,4,6-trihydroxy-1,3,5triazine), was found to increase apparent protein content in milk products and it has been added purposely to give high protein content [4, 5]
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