Preliminary Studies for the Differentiation of Apple Juice Samples by Chemometric Analysis of Solid-Phase Microextraction−Gas Chromatographic Data

Abstract

A combination of gas chromatography (GC) and chemometrics was evaluated for its ability to differentiate between apple juice samples on the basis of apple variety and applied heat treatment. The heat treatment involved exposure of 15 mL juice samples for 30 s in a 900 W domestic microwave oven. The chromatographic results were subjected to two chemometric procedures: (1) partial least squares (PLS) regression and (2) linear discriminant analysis (LDA) applied to principal component (PC) scores. The percent correct classification of samples were obtained from PLS and LDA in terms of separation on the basis of apple variety and applied heat treatment. PLS gave the highest level of correct classification of the apple juice samples according to both variety and heat treatment, 92.5% correct classification in each case. When LDA was performed on the PC scores obtained from GC analysis, 87.5% and 80% of samples were correctly classified according to apple variety used and applied heat treatment, respectively.