Identification and Quantification of Turmeric Adulteration in Egg-Pasta by Near Infrared Spectroscopy and Chemometrics

“Egg pasta” is a kind of pasta prepared by adding eggs in the dough; the color of this product is often associated to its quality, as it is proportional to the quantity of egg present in the dough. A possible adulteration on this product is represented by the addition of turmeric (not reported in the label) in the dough. The inclusion of this ingredient (which is minimal, given the strong coloring power of this spice) fraudulently accentuates the yellow color of the product, making it more attractive to the consumer. Given this scenario, the aim of the present work is to develop an analytical approach suitable at detecting the presence of turmeric as an adulterant in egg pasta. One hundred samples of traditional and adulterated egg pasta were analyzed by NIR spectroscopy and PLS-DA (Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis) in order to discriminate adulterated and compliant pasta. The classification model provided a total correct classification rate of 97.5% in external validation (40 samples). Eventually, the adulterant was quantified by PLS. This strategy provided satisfying results, achieving a RMSEP (Root Mean Square Error in Prediction) of 0.112 (%-w/w) in external validation.