Fatty Acids-Based Quality Index to Differentiate Worldwide Commercial Pistachio Cultivars

Molecules 2019, 24(1), 58

DOI: 10.3390/molecules24010058

The fatty acid profiles of five main commercial pistachio cultivars, including Ahmad-Aghaei, Akbari, Chrok, Kalle-Ghouchi, and Ohadi, were determined by gas chromatography: palmitic (C16:0), palmitoleic (C16:1), stearic (C18:0), oleic (C18:1), linoleic (C18:2), linolenic (C18:3), arachidic (C20:0), and gondoic (C20:1) acid. Based on the oleic to linoleic acid (O/L) ratio, a quality index was determined for these five cultivars: Ohadi (2.40) < Ahmad-Aghaei (2.60) < Kale-Ghouchi (2.94) < Chrok (3.05) < Akbari (3.66). Principal component analysis (PCA) of the fatty acid data yielded three significant PCs, which together account for 80.0% of the total variance in the dataset. A linear discriminant analysis (LDA) model that was evaluated with cross-validation correctly classified almost all of the samples: the average percent accuracy for the prediction set was 98.0%. The high predictive power for the prediction set shows the ability to indicate the cultivar of an unknown sample based on its fatty acid chromatographic fingerprint.

A review on the application of chromatographic methods, coupled to chemometrics, for food authentication

Food Control, 93, 165-182, 2018

DOI: 10.1016/j.foodcont.2018.06.015

The increase of food adulteration, inducing losing a large amount of money as well as of the confidence of consumers, has become an urgent issue for producers, researchers, governments and consumers. Chromatographic methods, in combination with chemometrics, are usually developed and applied throughout the food chain to verify the nature or origin of food, with both targeted (metabolomics) and non-targeted (profiling) approaches. Their operation, together with their advantages and drawbacks, will be discussed in this review to show strategies to solve food authentication issues.