A rapid method to detect green pea and peanut adulteration in pistachio by using portable FT-MIR and FT-NIR spectroscopy combined with chemometrics

In this research, the determination of green pea and peanut adulteration in pistachio by portable Fourier transform mid-infrared (FT-MIR) and Fourier transform near-infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy was studied. A rapid method to detect adulteration in pistachio is a necessity in the food industry because of its high commodity value and being one of the most consumed tree nuts. Pistachio nut is a target for economically motivated adulteration, and green pea, spinach, and peanut are the most seen adulterants in pistachio. Portable FT-MIR and FT-NIR spectrometers are simple, non-invasive, rapid, easy to transport, and cheaper alternatives to traditional methods, including chromatography (GC, HPLC), mass-spectroscopy (GC-MS, LC-MS) for the detection of pistachio adulteration. Powdered pistachio samples were adulterated with powdered green pea and peanut samples at different concentrations (5–40%). Spectra were collected with a portable FT-MIR and FT-NIR spectrometers and analyzed by Soft Independent Modeling of Class Analogy (SIMCA) to generate a classification model to authenticate pure pistachio, and Partial Least Square Regression (PLSR) to predict the levels of adulterants in pistachio. SIMCA provided, in both units, very distinct clusters for pure and adulterated samples with inter-class distance (ICD) over 3. Both units also showed superior performance in predicting adulterant levels with rVal>0.99, standard error of prediction (SEP) < 2.5%. Based on SIMCA and PLSR models, portable FT-NIR spectrometer provided more advantages over portable FT-MIR unit because the prediction with the FT-NIR spectrometer was more precise than the FT-MIR unit. Both portable FT-MIR and FT-NIR units can be used as alternative methods to traditional methods and showed great potential for real-time surveillance to detect green pea and peanut adulteration in pistachio.