Assessment of UV-visible spectroscopy as a useful tool for determining grape-must caramel in high-quality wine and balsamic vinegars

Current Application of Advancing Spectroscopy Techniques in Food Analysis: Data Handling with Chemometric Approaches

In today's era of increased food consumption, consumers have become more demanding in terms of safety and the quality of products they consume. As a result, food authorities are closely monitoring the food industry to ensure that products meet the required standards of quality. The analysis of food properties encompasses various aspects, including chemical and physical descriptions, sensory assessments, authenticity, traceability, processing, crop production, storage conditions, and microbial and contaminant levels. Traditionally, the analysis of food properties has relied on conventional analytical techniques. However, these methods often involve destructive processes, which are laborious, time-consuming, expensive, and environmentally harmful. In contrast, advanced spectroscopic techniques offer a promising alternative. Spectroscopic methods such as hyperspectral and multispectral imaging, NMR, Raman, IR, UV, visible, fluorescence, and X-ray-based methods provide rapid, non-destructive, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly means of food analysis. Nevertheless, interpreting spectroscopy data, whether in the form of signals (fingerprints) or images, can be complex without the assistance of statistical and innovative chemometric approaches. These approaches involve various steps such as pre-processing, exploratory analysis, variable selection, regression, classification, and data integration. They are essential for extracting relevant information and effectively handling the complexity of spectroscopic data. This review aims to address, discuss, and examine recent studies on advanced spectroscopic techniques and chemometric tools in the context of food product applications and analysis trends. Furthermore, it focuses on the practical aspects of spectral data handling, model construction, data interpretation, and the general utilization of statistical and chemometric methods for both qualitative and quantitative analysis. By exploring the advancements in spectroscopic techniques and their integration with chemometric tools, this review provides valuable insights into the potential applications and future directions of these analytical approaches in the food industry. It emphasizes the importance of efficient data handling, model development, and practical implementation of statistical and chemometric methods in the field of food analysis.

Origin of the effects of optical spectrum and flow behaviour in determining the quality of dry fig, jujube, pomegranate, date palm and concentrated grape vinegars

In this study, we focused on physical characterization and quality control of dry fig, jujube, pomegranate, date palm and concentrated grape vinegars using UV spectroscopy method and rheology technique. The optical spectra and flow behaviour of the vinegars were analysed in detail in the selected specific wavelength, shear rate and frequency ranges, respectively. It was determined that the peak values seen in the UV spectra of the vinegars were caused by the organic acid and phenolic compound concentration. The peak values in the UV spectra of the vinegars wavelength range of 190 nm to 240 nm and 250 nm to 300 nm were caused by the organic acid and phenolic compound concentration, respectively. In this context, it was predicted that concentrated grape vinegar, which has the highest absorbance value, has higher organic acid content and more antibacterial/antioxidant properties compared to the others. It is thought that the optical energy gaps of vinegars are related to the organic acid concentration and the release time. Flow properties of the vinegars were non-Newtonian thickening fluids (dilatant fluids) and compatible with the Power law model. The stable flow of the vinegars in the high shear rate region was interpreted as having a successful production process and being of good quality.

Evaluation of quality the pumpkin, wild plum, pear, cabbage traditional homemade vinegars using the spectroscopy and rheology methods

In this study, the quality evaluation of homemade pumpkin, pear, wild plum and cabbage vinegar produced by traditional methods was carried out using the ultraviolet (UV) spectroscopy, rheology technique and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy method. The measurement of UV spectra, flow behaviours and infrared spectral fingerprints of all the vinegars were performed in the wavelength range of 190 nm to 600 nm, shear rate of 10^-3 s^-1 to 10² s^-1 and wavenumber of 4200 c^-1 to 400 cm^-1 at room temperature, respectively. The quality of homemade vinegars was correlated with the UV spectra peaks, which took values with acetic acid and phenolic compound concentrations. It was determined that the absorption coefficient and optical energy gaps (E_g) which were caused by the release time, depends on the organic acids content. It was observed that the UV spectra and forbidden energy gaps of all the vinegars compatible with the Lambert-Beer-Bouguer and Tauc laws, respectively. The flow behaviour of homemade vinegars was consistent with the non-Newtonian flow, which is the signature behaviour of the dilatant (thickening) and pseudo-plastic (thinning) liquids. Moreover, it was determined that the spectral fingerprint peaks obtained from FTIR spectroscopy were caused by the mixture of acetic acid and water forming the structure of the vinegar. As a result of spectroscopy and rheological analyses, which yields compatible results with commercial tests, it is predicted that it can be safely used as health test.

Helium Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Jet Source Treatment of White Grapes Juice for Winemaking

In the last few years, new emerging technologies to develop novel winemaking methods were reported. Most of them pointed out the need to assess the barrel aging on the wine product, fermentation process, green technologies for wine treatment for long term storage. Among these, plasma technologies at atmospheric pressure are on the way of replacing old and expensive methods for must, wine and yeast treatment, the goal being the long-term storage, aging and even decontamination of such products, and seems to meet the requirements of the winemakers. Using the principles of dielectric barrier discharge, we power up an atmospheric pressure plasma jet in helium. This plasma is used for treatment of fresh must obtained from white grapes. Our research manuscript is focused on the correlation of plasma parameters (applied voltage, plasma power, reactive species, gas temperature) with the physico-chemical properties of white must and wine (1 and 2 years old), via ultraviolet–visible and infrared spectroscopy, and colorimetry. Two types of white must were plasma treated and studied over time. The 10 W plasma source did not exceed 40 °C during treatment, the must did not suffer during thermal treatment. A higher quantity of RONS was observed during plasma-must exposure, supporting further oxidation processes. The UV-Vis and FTIR spectroscopy revealed the presence of phenols, flavones and sugar in the wine samples. Simultaneous visualization of CIE L*a*b* and RGB in color space charts allows easier understanding of wine changing in color parameters. These experimental results supporting the possible usability of atmospheric pressure plasma for winemaking.

Slovak Tokaj wines classification with respect to geographical origin by means of one class approaches

Tokaj wines could be produced only in so called Tokaj/Tokay wine region that falls within two countries Slovakia and Hungary. Thus, wines bearing Tokaj appellation must be produced only in Hungary and Slovakia by traditional process. Unfortunately, some counterfeit wines from neighbour region in Ukraine could be found in market. The aim of this work is to explore a simple UV-VIS spectrum to recognise true Tokaj/Tokay wines from counterfeits and try to differentiate wines based on their country of origin. This type of question can be duly answered using one class classification approach. Two different approaches, Data Driven Soft Independent Modelling of Class Analogy - DD-SIMCA and One-Class Partial Least Squares - OC-PLS were tested and evaluated for this purpose. In both cases, rigorous way models were built and optimized using only samples of the target class. A set of external samples containing samples from target class and non-target were used to validate the models ability to recognize Slovak samples and reject non-Slovak samples. Model based on DD-SIMCA showed better performance (97% correct rating) compared to OC-PLS models (80% correct rating). Comparing both approaches in terms of sensitivity and specificity, both exhibit high sensitivity (low false negative rate: DD-SIMCA 95% and OC-PLS 100%), however the OC-PLS based model showed low specificity (40%) while DD-SIMCA showed high specificity (100%) rejecting all samples out of Slovak origin. Therefore, the results found in this study show that it is possible to successfully combine UV-VIS spectra and DD-SIMCA models to discriminate Tokaj wine samples of Slovak origin from others. Equally important is environmentally friendly (fast, simple, absence of solvents) classification method in line with green chemistry.

A Methodology Based on FT-IR Data Combined with Random Forest Model to Generate Spectralprints for the Characterization of High-Quality Vinegars

Sherry wine vinegar is a Spanish gourmet product under Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). Before a vinegar can be labeled as Sherry vinegar, the product must meet certain requirements as established by its PDO, which, in this case, means that it has been produced following the traditional solera and criadera ageing system. The quality of the vinegar is determined by many factors such as the raw material, the acetification process or the aging system. For this reason, mainly producers, but also consumers, would benefit from the employment of effective analytical tools that allow precisely determining the origin and quality of vinegar. In the present study, a total of 48 Sherry vinegar samples manufactured from three different starting wines (Palomino Fino, Moscatel, and Pedro Ximénez wine) were analyzed by Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. The spectroscopic data were combined with unsupervised exploratory techniques such as hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA), as well as other nonparametric supervised techniques, namely, support vector machine (SVM) and random forest (RF), for the characterization of the samples. The HCA and PCA results present a clear grouping trend of the vinegar samples according to their raw materials. SVM in combination with leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOCV) successfully classified 100% of the samples, according to the type of wine used for their production. The RF method allowed selecting the most important variables to develop the characteristic fingerprint (“spectralprint”) of the vinegar samples according to their starting wine. Furthermore, the RF model reached 100% accuracy for both LOOCV and out-of-bag (OOB) sets.

On line kinetic analysis of permeation profiles for UV filter loaded microemulsions using an automatic system with spectroscopic detection and a chemometric approach

The analysis of the permeation kinetics of new UV filter formulations is of great importance since the kinetic parameters are related to the effectiveness of the product over time. The dynamics of this process can be evaluated by means of the calculation of the permeation kinetic constants, which can be obtained from the respective permeation profiles. This paper is aimed at improving the analytical performance of permeation assays using an on-line automatic system with spectrometric detection avoiding the chromatographic procedure and the usually manual sampling steps required using the traditional Franz diffusion cell. Then, the kinetics of permeation of octyl p-methoxycinnamate loaded in different microemulsions through a synthetic membrane (polyamide) was analysed at real time by UV-Vis and fluorescence spectroscopies. The spectral data were obtained at regular intervals of time (5 min) during 60 min, and the concentration of the permeated UV-filter was at each time calculated using univariate linear calibration. The interference caused by the presence of basil essential oil (oily phase) in some microemulsion samples was overcome using synchronous fluorescence spectroscopy (Δλ = 60 nm) and partial least squares. In all cases, the permeation profiles were obtained (first-order kinetics) and the respective permeation kinetic constants were calculated. The validation of the proposed method was assessed by gas chromatographic-mass spectroscopy and non-significant differences for the obtained permeation kinetic constants were found between methods (p = 0.05). Additionally, a commercial sample was analysed with the proposed methods and the results were validated by high performance liquid chromatography technique.