The Royal Society of Chemistry’s “Advances in the Chemical Analysis of Food V” conference, last week, included a number of talks and posters on various aspects of food authenticity testing. The keynote, from Professor Chris Elliot, was on the use of data fusion to improve untargeted classification models by aggregating information from multiple analytical approaches.
One presentation, from Nathan O’Neill at the University of East Anglia (a FAN Centre of Expertise) raised new suspicions about turmeric authenticity.
Conventional wisdom (and Seasoning & Spice Association guidance) is that a significant vulnerability point for turmeric adulteration is when the roots are ground. However, in this case, Nathan sourced intact roots from both UK and overseas online sellers. Only reputable sellers were used but there were no prior assumptions about sample authenticity. Chemometric feature selection and modelling (using two orthogonal untargeted analytical techniques) highlighted some of the samples whch were clear outliers. These outlying classifications were consistent between replicate analyses and between the two orthogonal test methods.
The next planned research stage is to build reference databases for each method, then check if these outliers are mislabelled or if it reflects honest variation within turmeric taxonomy and production.
Details of the conference programme and speakers can be found here
