To reduce (industrial) chemical adulterations and to ensure authenticity of spices and herbs by evaluation and improvement of non-targeted fingerprinting methods.

Aim

To develop a rapid and cost-efficient set of methodologies for the detection of natural, accidental and deliberate contamination of spices and herbs with (unexpected) chemical agents.

Background

Traditional strategies to guarantee food quality and safety and to detect adulterations are typically based on wet chemistry and suffer from a number of disadvantages. As such, there is a continuing demand to investigate ways to combine existing testing methods and emerging technologies into a comprehensive analytical strategy for early quality and safety assurance in the food chain.

Methodology

The application of several spectrometric and spectroscopic fingerprinting techniques will be evaluated using a representative set of authentic and adulterated samples. The fingerprinting data will be used to develop and evaluate various chemometric classification techniques that allow distinguishing authentic samples from adulterated/contaminated samples. The application of HPLC-MS/MS to determine the identity and composition will be evaluated.

Workpackage leader: DLO

Partners: BfR, BIOR, FUCHS

Tasks

Task 4.1 Review of the application of fingerprinting methods for spices and detection of chemical hazards
Task 4.2 Development and evaluation of fingerprinting methods to detect chemical hazards in spices
Task 4.3 Setting standards for natural variation in authentic spices and development of a database with authentic material
Task 4.4 Investigation of spices spiked with adulterations and evaluation and validation of chemometric techniques to detect anomalies

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